Evangelion: When Worlds Collide
by rellams
Summary: After a two-year break, the angels are back at Tokyo-3's gates. Once again, NERV gathers up the best pilots from around the world to battle them in the Interim - a dream world in between the angel and human worlds. A final battle that could change the universe as we know it draws closer every day. Partial AU, several OC's later on. Probably Shinji x Rei.
1. Chapter 1 - Asuka Strikes!

_Disclaimer: I own no characters in this story. They are property of Gainax/Anno etc._

_Past _

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

CHAPTER 1

Asuka Strikes!

It was a hot day in Tokyo-3. The school year has just started and summer was still in full swing. It was almost noon and afternoon classes at the Yui Ikari Memorial High School were under way. Behind a door on the third floor adorned with a black plaque with "2-A" in large white font, a young teacher, about 30 years of age, was giving a lesson on limits. It was still early days in the school year, so most of the class was eagerly concentrating on the work, scribbling down notes from the board at speed. However, not all of the students shared that enthusiasm.

Right next to the window sat Rei Ayanami, whose distinctive short blue hair could be pinpointed even in the school's main hall when it was packed full by students for the weekly assembly. Like most school days, she was absent-mindedly staring out of the window at the streets below. The unchanging landscape of trees, buildings and high-voltage lines was hardly an exciting replacement for Honekawa-sensei's mathematics lesson, but she enjoyed it anyway. She managed to get really good marks on every single exam she has ever taken at school, so the teachers didn't mind her spacing out so often either. Everyone considered her a genius, but a bit on the weird side. The incident with the props from the school play last year didn't help her cause either - she convinced the history teacher, Katsuragi-sensei, that she was in love with a hollow papier-mâché horse head, which was used in the school play.

_"B-but I really like it. A lot. It would be most agreeable if you could let me keep it" - she told her in a soft, sultry voice, cheeks flushed and eyes turned down, as if confessing to a lover._

Katsuragi-sensei was taken aback by her love of the prop and really just wanted to end the awkward conversation there and then, and had no choice but to let the blue-haired beauty happily skip away, holding the head high above her head in a victory gesture. The teacher was soon made to regret that decision, as a few days later, it turned out all she needed it for was taking discrete naps wearing it in her own class. The dangerous trend was also catching on amongst other students, so the teachers had to ban all forms of animal heads from school grounds. Even today, one can see the sign outside the main gates, hastily painted together - "No animal-shaped headgear allowed on premises. Neither is betraying the teachers' trust." - a little frowning face with long purple hair gave a hint to its author's identity. Rei's coolness points went up from almost non-existent to a nice round number that week.

Two years ago, she was a shy girl. Perhaps reserved is a better word. So reserved she never spoke to anybody and nobody else would take note of her. She was as much part of her class as the desks and chairs. In the morning she would be there, and in the afternoons she would leave. Nobody knew anything about her. It started to change when she stopped showing up to class in bandages every week. When the Angels suddenly stopped appearing, the NERV pilot simply had nothing to do. The first month her schedule was still the same - sync tests, simulations, training. But the pilots trained less in the second month after the encounter with the sixth angel, Gaghiel, and even less in the third. Halfway through a year, Asuka Soryu, the second child just gave up on training and would not be seen inside the headquarters except for the occasional weekly sync test. Her scores remained excellent, so the nobody was really concerned. Everybody there wanted a break from a job as stressful as protecting the world. By the end of the first year saw Gendo Ikari, the commander of NERV Japan, throw the mother of all tantrums at the bridge.

_"Why am I surrounded by idiots? Not even the angels are doing what they are supposed to do! Stupid immortal knobs, can't they read or something?! I have the scenario right here, you know!" The poor bridge technician Shigeru Aoba took the full frontal force of Ikari's mental assault. All efforts from Kozo Fuyutsuki, his second-in-command, to calm him down ended with failure, and he was now storming around the lower level, patronizing the bridge bunnies. In his hands he clutched a heavy file saying "The Dead Sea Scroll Scenario". "Worthless junk!" - He held out the scrunched up papers in his hands and shook his fist, as if threatening God himself. "That ginger brat had the right idea - I'm leaving for Okinawa. Screw Yui, there are hotter chicks there." - he decided, and rushed out of the maintenance access hatch on level 3, tossing off his shirt as he ran. "OKINAWAAAA!"_

The next day Gendo Ikari assembled the staff of the HQ to issue a formal apology for his mental breakdown, but nevertheless announced that active personnel will be cut down to just those who were absolutely necessary for keeping the base at level 5 battle readiness. The sync tests would also be on hold until further notice. Gendo decided to scrap the scenario. If he could not get what he wanted, neither would SEELE, the committee - or "old farts" as the commander always used to call them - behind the funding of the Instrumentality project.

Rei, among the others pilots, was to stop reporting to the HQ, stop taking her drugs, and until the angels would return - pretty much free to try living. Her senses sharpened, her mind was clearer, and her body became restless. At the start of freshman year in high school, she surprised everyone by showing up to the start-of-the-year meetings for 52 different clubs. When students inquired why, all of a sudden, the formerly indifferent girl was taking such an unhealthy interest in school life, after some thinking, she just replied _" I'm bored."_ with a signature blank "I don't care what's happening around me" Ayanami expression. With piloting duties now not weighing on her shoulders as heavy as they used to, she was indeed bored. Now, when she would go home after school, there was practically nothing for her to do. Ayanami's room remained half-empty - no TV, no PC, no PS, no other abbreviations. Even though all the children were rewarded handsomely with cold hard currency for their risky duties, Rei's room has remained the same as years ago, and did an awful job at containing the new, livelier first child. In the end - she settled on two - the cooking club and the firearm enthusiast club. The two were populated by two entirely different kinds of people.

The second consisted of bespectacled scrawny guys, led by Kensuke Aida, another one of Rei's classmates. Even though the pilot of unit-00 no longer went to NERV on a daily basis and participated in marksmanship training, she was very attached to her SCAR-H automatic rifle. Apparently, it was something akin to a favourite teddy bear to her.

The first consisted of cutesy, shy, homely girls, and one Asuka Langley Soryu, who was dragged to the club room one day by her friend and class rep of 2-B Hikari Horaki - who also happened to be club president due to her commanding nature and extraordinary cooking skills. While everyone was happy to a new member into the somewhat scarcely-populated cooking club, the pilot of unit-02 was less than enthusiastic about Rei. She came here to learn to cook and not to spend time with that doll! To make matters worse, their cooking skills were almost identical. As Honekawa-sensei was saying at this moment - albeit about a different matter whatsoever - both are infinitely close to zero. Because of their cluelessness, Hikari often paired them together so they could learn faster, without tying up too many of the other members with assisting the newbies. Hikari of course tried to keep a tight watch on the duo, but occasionally, even that failed. Half the school still had pictures of an angry-looking redhead missing half an eyebrow. Some students' cell phones even captured the moments before her fists impacted with their owners faces on video.

But both Asuka and Rei continued to show up at the club without fail. Rei showed much more ability at cooking than the second child, so at one point Asuka stopped showing up completely, deflated by the fact that the "emotionless doll" was better at her than something. But Hikari continued dragging her friend along to the club after school days ended.

_The students sniggered at the unusual sight - a dark haired girl with pigtails held another tightly by her arms and pulled her towards the far end of the corridor. The other girl kept screaming "I DON'T WANNA!" while throwing her head around violently, her long red hair flailing around. The rest of her body offered little resistance, her legs stretched out limply, shoes dragging, and her bottom gliding along the tile floor, dirtying the backside of her skirt."Get up Asuka!" - the other freshman yelled - "I'm making you go whether you want to or not!" - "NO!". Hikari Horaki was running out of ideas. Sure, she could pull Asuka's light body across the whole corridor, but this was the second floor. The club room was next to the home economics class, which was on the third. No way she would be able to carry her up a flight of stairs. But she was class rep for a reason. "Asuka, you have to learn how to cook! You can't keep eating that garbage! To be honest, I didn't want to tell you, but I could really see your stomach bulging out in class today!" Hikari made an effort to focus on enunciating the last few words as best she could. Immediately, the numbers on the thermostat on the opposite wall registered a sharp drop. One of Asuka's wrists twitched in Hikari's hands, a signal the pig-tailed girl's brain interpreted as 'START HAULING ASS'. _

_"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!"_

_The laughter around them stopped, replaced by cries of worry. Things like "RUN HORAKI-CHAN!" "DON'T LET HER CATCH YOU!" and "500 YEN ON THE DEVIL!" could clearly be heard. Hikari ran the fastest she ever had in her life. When Hikari reached the staircase at the end of the hallway, her feet skidded slightly in front of the stairs as she rapidly changed bearings to climb up to the third floor, her legs using only every second step. _

_"HIKARI HORAKIIIIII! GET BACK HERE!"_

_She knew any misstep at this stage would be fatal. At the end of a twelve-stair fall, a fiery devil awaited her. Hikari thanked her lucky stars that the club room was just to the left of the stairs as she ran through its door. Only when Hikari jumped out from behind her and locked the door did Soryu realize where she was and the steam stopped escaping from her nostrils._

_"That was really mean, Horaki!"_

_"Gomen, Asuka-chan, but I really want you to keep coming to this club!" - the black haired girls face pleadingly "Lying to make you embarrassed in front of everyone was the only thing I could think ofto drag you here.. Gomen, ne"_

Asuka pursed her lips and turned away from her with a huff, but turned not towards the door, but towards Ayanami standing in the corner, and with arms folded and stomach drawn-in, proceeded in her direction. Asuka, despite being really tsun on the outside, was not the kind of person to hold a grudge against a friend. Even If they did embarrass her in front of a full hallway of students. Well, maybe she did hold a little grudge. But one thing she gave up on caring long ago about was what the other students thought of her.

_"I'm Asuka Langley Soryu. Charmed, huh!"_

Those words seemed very distant to her. Back then, everybody WAS charmed. She was a new face at the school, and being the only foreigner there, everybody was fascinated with her. Transfer students usually cause a stir in schools, but this one made even more of an impact. She was not only half-European, but she also happened to have a college degree. Asuka's pretty face, slender body and long hair earned her dozens of love confessions in her first week there alone. Her intelligence and book smarts put her in good stead with the teachers too. And even though nobody outside of NERV was to know of her successes as a pilot, inside NERV she was a hero. A brave AVE unit-02 pilot, who dispatched the Gaghiel, the seventh angel, without any trouble, on her very first real anti-angel combat mission.

_No sooner has the UN First Fleet has just finished towing the second child - Asuka Langley Soryu - and her AVE equipment halfway across the globe, and docked in Tokyo-3, than the fleet admiral received a call._

_"Sir!" - a young Midshipman stretched to attention in the corner of the cabin, his right hand tapping away at the controls - "NERV's director of operations, Lieutenant Katsuragi on the line. She says it's urgent!"_

_"Ugh, what does that crazy woman want now? Haven't I humiliated the pride of our Navy enough by using half our fleet to tow some kid's electronic toys, and now I have to - " - the admiral was cut off by a cheery voice from the video screen on his panel._

_"This crazy woman wants you to immediately execute directive "Interception-1"! And just by the way" - she lowered her voice to a teasing whisper - " this crazy woman is also your superior at the moment." Misato Katsuragi gave him a wing and raised her hand in a playful victory sign._

_"Grrrragh!" - was all the admiral could muster in return."All hands, alert level two! Begin operation "Interception-1"!" - he roared into the vessel's intercom - "Now she's giving ME orders as well! What a ridiculous notion! Why I ought to.."_

_"No need admiral" - the voice comms stirred again - "Your gratitude is thanks enough." And with that the channel cut to [SOUND ONLY]._

_A few minutes later, Asuka was already ashore. NERV HQ's Sakashima Monitoring Station detected a blue pattern right off the shore of Japan's new capital. AVE-02 had to be activated remotely, so there was no way for the staff back at base to monitor the proceedings. The only link Asuka had to the outside world was Misato's voice to guide her._

_"You're heading in the right direction Asuka. Keep going along the embankment, we believe this angel is stationary at the moment, but that can obviously change, so keep your guard up, Asuka-chan!" - the same voice that drove the admiral out of his normal, ice-cold self, now penetrated Asuka's mind. This was one aspect she hated about piloting AVE. When they talk to you, it sounds like it's boring directly into your skull. There was no other way to communicate with somebody piloting AVE - the Artificial Virtuality Environment. At this moment, Asuka laid in her capsule, unconscious, neural transmitters clipped to her hair and her earpieces were in place as well. To put it simply, at this very moment, the red haired girl in the tight red plug suit was asleep. The red-haired girl in the red armour, looking around with a daring smile on her lips was Asuka Langley Soryu as well - she looked like Asuka, she behaved like Asuka, her thoughts were Asuka's. But they were also not the same. The second Asuka strode confidently through the deserted streets in the direction of the port. This was angel territory - a twilight world right between the angels' world, and humanity's own. This was an exact copy of Tokyo-3, except for the people. Asuka could not see anybody, and nobody could see her. This was the nature of the Interim, as NERV scientists called it. Angels were omnipresent and could see humans no matter in which world they were, meaning they could act upon humans in whichever way they wanted ._

But Asuka should have no trouble seeing the angel either. Her mother, Kyoko, was a Seer. Since the ancient times, only Seers could physically experience any live angel or angel remains. Most of the Seers around the world were with NERV, where they were needed most. It was also where they felt the most at ease at. Back in the year 2000, something terrible happened. According to the history books, a pandemic of a never-before-seen virus ravaged most of the earth, leaving hundreds of millions dead just in the first week. But there were some who have seen the truth. The Seers around the world saw what really happened. Those visions were not something a human mind could deal with easily, and today there were only several thousand Seers left around the world. Most of them are either dead or at mental institutions. Asuka's mother was sadly no exception. One day she just hung herself. And the first one to discover the ghastly site was her tiny five year old daughter.

_A decade later, that same girl is confidently striding along a walkway on the Tokyo-3 cargo embankment. As opposed to the "real" her, all the way in a different dimension inside a steel capsule aboard the USS "Over the Rainbow", she was not wearing a red plug suit. Asuka's long, slim legs were now covered on top by a rather revealing red skirt, and going up from her feet were thigh-high tights, covered in several solid crimson-red metal plates. Her upper body was protected by a modest metal-plated leather corset, which continued into something like an armour sleeve from shiny medieval armour onto her right arm. In Asuka's right hand, covered by a velvet white glove, she grasped a sizable war hammer. The red neural clips on her head were also gone, in their place were two red swept-back wing shapes, holding her hair in the exact same way their plastic predecessors did. The hammer swung wildly in Asuka's hand as she continued down the road, to her, it was not particularly heavy, and she was used to it after years of practice, and simulations. The intricate design on the weapon glowed with light as she gripped it._

_"Misatooooo! I've been searching for ages, and I still don't see anything on the shore. Should I turn back? Maybe it sensed me and ran away?" - She stopped and looked out towards the sea from the pier she was on, surrounded by dozens of nameless rusting ships. She didn't remember there being that many when she looked out at the docks from the UN ships. As much as this world was supposed to be a copy of the human world, sometimes it was off just enough to make it rather unsettling. -' I wonder if there are dead bodies aboard the'm - was one of the thoughts jolting through her consciousness, but she quickly shook it off. Besides the fact that Misato et al. could probably hear every little thing she was thinking, she couldn't allow herself to become even the least bit scared. Not on angel territory._

_"No can't do, Asuka. Our maps show you are really close to the source. Just keep looking around, it has to be there somewhere." - Asuka wasn't listening anymore. Her thoughts were concentrated on the water down below her feet and the metal dock she was standing on. There was someone there. A teenage boy's face peeked out from under the small waves in the calm bay water. The face was framed by light blonde, almost ashen wet hair, and was barely floating above the water. Several things immediately connected in Asuka's mind._

_1) It was windy._

_Her long red hair was being thrown around by wind for a while now, but this was the first time the German girl noticed it. Her hair was not the only thing on her flapping gratuitously at the moment. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink._

_2) The boy's face was flushed red._

_While it was certainly unusual for somebody to appear from underwater, that definitely did not look like a face of a normal boy - pr any kind of normal human. Unless he has been floating like that with his face turned towards the hot summer sun the whole morning, it is very unlikely it would achieve such a pigmentation on its own._

_3) He was staring at a point in space for a very long time now. _

_With some simple geometrical calculations, it did not take Asuka very long to figure out just what exactly this strange boy had been staring at. With a lee way of +/- 5 degrees, it was her panties._

_"W- What do you think you are doing, baka?!" - Asuka's own cheeks went into heat production overdrive, and her girl chastity-preservation instincts kicked in - " Dirty pervert!" - The hammer drew a wide arch over the now-completely-red girl before crashing into the strange boy's head. _

_-ZZZZINNGGGG-_

_Asuka quickly realized what was going on. Quickly putting even more of her strength and embarrassment and the swing, she tried to force her weapon through the AT-field. For a fraction of a second, the two struggled to overpower each other before one finally broke. With a loud clang, the hammer connected with the perverted angel's head. The boy's expression could only be described as anime-esque, as he sank back underwater with a whimper - "W-worth... it... glug-glug" - he breathed , going under._

_"Where do you think you're going? You still haven't paid the viewing fee!" - Asuka felt a sense of urgency, her simulations in the Munich labs have taught her one thing - once you get an advantage - pursue it. She glance at her left arm. Unlike her right, it was not protected by armour. On the pale skin, something akin to a tattoo glowed with light. Along the length of her slender arm, a single design with intertwining lines and cursive writing that said 'lux illustrans' ran from her elbow to the tips of her glove-covered fingers. As she had done so many times before in simulations, she focused of the burning sensation she got from the light embedded in her forearm. She was smack dead in the middle of Tokyo-3, so drawing power for the blast should not be a problem. _

_As she focused on the current flowing around her in the wires of Tokyo-3 more and more, the pain in her arm got worse . The red-head simply clenched her teeth tight and pointed her arm downwards - in the direction where she last saw the angel. Asuka steadied her arm a bit, and then let go. Her eyes automatically shut closed from the bright light pouring out of her arm, which was so intense that her retina has never gotten used to seeing it. The pain momentarily got worse, before receding completely._

* * *

_In his flat in Tokyo-3, Kensuke Aida was skipping school. While he didn't do it often, when one needs a break - one needs a break. Nothing could be done about that._

_"Arrrgh, move it, you noob! Stop blocking me, dammit!" - He was using that break to immerse himself in a World War 2 setting - by playing a popular online game - World of Panzer. He was finally about to kill the annoying enemy Tiger tank. - "Five seconds until reload, come on! Two! One!" On the count of 0, there was no shot. The only sound the budding tank MMO enthusiast heard was the soft hum of his PC shutting down. He looked over to the right at the TV - it stared back with a blank expression on its dark screen. "THE POWER IS OUT?! FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"_

* * *

Thoughts about her first - and only - time battling an angel flooded into Asuka's mind as soon as she remembered the SMS she received that morning. Even though she hated it when she pitied herself, she couldn't help but be a little bit nostalgic about her first days over in Japan. She was popular at first, but soon, adoration was replaced with suspicion. Asuka was reminded of it every day in class, where, on her desk, a tiny faded carving slanted across it - "Gaijin wh*re" - it said.

Asuka paid no heed to it, like she has for the past two years. Instead, with a practiced swipe of her arm, she unsheathed her cell out of her bag and into her lap. The red-head opened up her contacts list, selected the name Yuuna, and clicked 'Send message'. As her long fingers worked away on the on-screen keyboard, a sentence started appearing above it.

"Come outside after class, have something to tell you"

Asuka gave it one last glance, she hated sending texts with errors in them. And she hated getting texts with errors back even more. Satisfied with it, she tapped her finger on the 'Send" button. The teacher was still going on about the maths that the red-head has already done twice in Germany - once in school, and in university the second time.

'Ugh, how can he be so enthusiastic about this& this is so BORING.' - she thought about the teacher, and rested her head on her hands, so that it tilted in such a way in which her eyes could see the window. 'What is so interesting in that window, Wondergirl?' - Asuka was starting to get annoyed at Rei, who hasn't so much as moved for most of the class, and kept staring outside. Her eyes wandered past the first child and onto the third. Shinji Ikari, who was sitting just behind Rei, was diligently copying from the blackboard, his head jerking up and down to relay the information from the board into his notes. 'Pathetic' - she thought - 'The world could be ending any time, and he is taking notes. I guess I was right after all. That little WORM! The nerve, to just..'

-Burrrrrrrr-

A vibrating noise interrupted her irate train of thought. Without lifting her head off her arms, Asuka glanced to her right, towards her iPhone which just alerted her to the fact that she got a message.

"Haaaai~ ^_^"

'I wish Yuu-chan would stop typing like that, gosh!' - Asuka slowly closed her book, halting mid-way in her movement to give the page designated for today's lesson a look. The only writing on the blank page was today's date. 'What a pointless day' - with that thought, she closed it, tossed it in her bag, strapped the bag over her shoulder and got up. There was still some time left in the period, but she didn't care. And neither did the teacher, who was used to such acts of disregard by her. With a practiced motion, Asuka flipped her hair back. Without her neural clips, which some time ago formed an integral part of her hairstyle every day, hair got in her eyes constantly. But a promise was a promise, and she didn't intend to go back to piloting AVE. Not now, not ever. The clips were a symbol of everything associated with piloting - being a sort of elite human, selected for a unique duty - protecting the world. But after she quit NERV, she decided they weren't that great. What was the point in even wearing them if nobody was allowed to know her secret? Nobody outside NERV even knew what NERV did, besides the official version that they were a PMC - a private military company with the latest self-developed weaponry, to which governments around the world often turned to in this post-second impact era of non-stop crises. But without any angels to fight, the clips, like her life, had no meaning to her.

As she walked past Yuuna Miyazaki, the girl she messaged earlier, Asuka was on the end of a disapproving look from both her and Hikari, the class rep. In return, she could only offer a shrug to her close friends, which told them - 'No reason for me to be here, really.' Hikari could only give a quiet sigh and returned to writing her notes. She, like everyone was used to Asuka's slack attitude to class attendance. Yuuna, on the other hand, gave her a grin and a thumbs up.

On the right-hand side of the class, Shinji only noticed Asuka's absence when he saw a red flash in the doorway out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and just caught the sight of the girl walking out into the corridor. He hasn't really even spoken to her after their falling out long ago.

_"You won't even hold me!" - she screamed, her red dishevelled hair stuck to her face, as she thrashed around the room, knocking stuff over. Her voice descended to a harsh whisper - "Are you that disgusted with me?"_

_"Sorry, Asuka, I.." - Shinji didn't really know what to say. He did not know what would make her calm down. Was there even a point in calming her down? He was completely unaware of what made this strange girl tick._

_"Don't even say anything to me!" - her voice escalated up to a shrill scream, which would have surely alerted the neighbours to their fight, if they had any in this empty building. "I Don't ever want to see your face again, idiot!" Her door slammed shut for the whole day and evening. When morning came she was gone. The only possession Asuka left in her room was a pair of red neural clips, lying half-broken in the centre of the empty room._

"Ikari-kun!" - in an instant, he was snapped back to reality by a sharp flick on his forehead. A beautiful face framed by messy blue hair smiled at him with mischievous red eyes - "It's too late to still be sleeping and too early to begin sleeping. Therefore, sleep would be counter-productive at this time." Shinji couldn't switch his thoughts from his memories to the present situation, so his only reply was a weak smile. Ayanami turned back around to face her desk.

"Are you thinking about her?" she asked in a soft voice.

"K-kind of. I guess I feel bad about it, I haven't even apologized or anything after such a long time, and" - he was cut off in mid-sentence by Rei, who spoke up again wit her back to him.

"Ikari-kun."

"Hai?" - Shinji stared at the back of her head, feeling a bit awkward that she was not facing him when talking.

"One should not apologise for what one's heart feels. Or doesn't feel." - Rei continued in the same soft voice, which calmed his thoughts a bit.

"I.. see." - Shinji had to think about that one. Nowadays Ayanami's speech was filled to the brim with sayings that she herself has made up, and some of them only made sense after a while. Something the heart does or doesn't feel?

* * *

"I LOVE how half the time you are not in class, Asuka-chan!" - Yuuna teased her friend from meters away, "And now you're making me skip it with you! Not the best influence in the world, are you?" she plopped down on the bench next to the red-head, her long ash-blonde hair flew up relative to her head as she did, to settle down half a second later in a messy pattern over her shoulders.

"Please, you know I am more entertaining than that boring old fart in English, that's why you agreed to come meet me!" - with a haughty smile, Asuka teased her in return.

"Obviously!" - Yuuna laughed -"So what did you want to show me?" - she turned her head to Asuka and smiled.

Asuka hesitated for a second. Even though Yuuna was her only friend who knew she piloted AVE, she still wasn't sure if the History Research club president should hear her news. Officially, she could not tell anyone any details about NERV or what they did, and Asuka knew it was with good reason.

"I... I got this message from Misato this morning" Asuka pulled her cell out of her bag, unlocked the screen and went into the messages folder. The one from Misato Katsuragi, dated 14/08/17 7:49AM said the following -

"Morning Asuka! :) Hope everything is well, just wanted to say that Sync tests resume Friday at 4. And if I don't see you there, I'll drive over and drag you by force :) Love, Misato-san" - the blonde read as Asuka held her cell in front of her face. Yuuna remembered about the vow Asuka had given, and a serious expression crept onto her face - "And? Are you gonna go?"

The German girl stared at the empty blue afternoon sky overhead. "I've thought about it" - she sighed - "I don't think I can actually get out of physically being there. Misato knows I still live in the same building, and she IS stronger than me. I would not actually put it past her to drive all the way back from NERV, just to pin me down and wrestle into one of the back doors of a car. NERV was a military-style organisation, after all. Who knows, maybe just for telling you what I already have, someone, somewhere, might point a gun to our heads and pull it."

"So.. are you?"

Asuka paused. "Yes." Yuuna looked in her eyes and saw conflict, the deep blue eyes into which her own green eyes stared conveyed their owner's confusion - "I thought I could just do poorly on the tests from now on, so they think I've lost it and that I can't fight properly."

Yuuna turned her head and now stared at the sky in the same direction that her friend has been staring at for a while.

"Asuka.. I'm.. glad. That you are going to go." She turned her head right again and looked at the red-head "Even though I know how you feel about AVE, and it's fine with me that you are going to try and get out of it, but deep inside I am happy that you will even do that much. As corny as it sounds, I truly believe it is your destiny to pilot AVE. If it is somebody like you protecting the world, I can sleep soundly at night." Yuuna smiled and turned back to the sky. A foreign object in that sky has caught the girls' attention.

A single blip was moving diagonally across the blue canvas of the sky, leaving behind a long white stroke.

Her friend's words rang through her head. 'My .. Destiny?' Asuka thought about it as she stared down the twin-jet airplane moving overhead. To the right of the two friends, a clock bell from the school chapel rang three times. The afternoon heat hasn't receded one little bit.


	2. Chapter 2 - A Restless Night

_Disclaimer: I own no characters in this story. They are property of Gainax/Anno etc._

_Past _

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

CHAPTER 2

A Restless Night

"Open LCL valves."

"Roger, initiating level one repletion."

"Pressure holding steady at 1,5."

"Increase to 2."

"Roger"

For Ritsuko Akagi, the head Scientist at NERV Japan HQ, the past week had gone by quickly. Monday started off with a routine area signature scan around Tokyo-3, and only three days later, the Geofront was thrown into a flurry of people and equipment frantically and chaotically being put to work. The radar at Tokyo South-West 113 reconnaissance station picked up what no other NERV radar has registered for nearly two years - a blue energy pattern, meaning only one thing - the angels were back.

Commander Ikari was immediately forced to bring HQ out of its "stasis" and schedule sync tests for the weekend. Should the pilot's sync test results be in the acceptable region, a search and destroy mission was to be planned and executed the next day. So, in the meantime, Dr. Akagi sat back in her comfortable chair, sipped on a cup of coffee, and kept her eyes on the computer screens in front of her. The largest one was divided into three parts, each showing one of the children in their AVE capsules. At the moment, their AVEs were not linked up to the Scorcher, and were just running in test mode, measuring each pilot's current ability to link up with it. The LCL in the capsules was pumped with mild sedatives, each unit filled according to each individuals pilot's individual body characteristics, and at evenly timed intervals, adrenaline was administered. The program Ritsuko was running would then measure how even the pilot's synchrograph was, representing their ability to stay in a stable half-dream state inside the Interim, disregarding stimuli both from inside it and from the real world.

In a real engagement, Shinji, Rei and Asuka's capsules would be linked up to the Scorcher - the preserved neuron system of the dead first angel - Adam. Being kept alive, but without a consciousness, Adam's brain would latch on to the bodies of the teenagers, and, unless it felt resistance to its mental tentacles, their consciousnesses would be incorporated into Adam's last living tissues, enabling them to travel into the Interim, and gain mythical powers in the process, much like what Adam used to possess himself. As far as the NERV scientists knew, three pilots was not the limit to how many separate consciousnesses could be "ran" inside Adam, and commander Ikari had already set in motion plans to further extend their current force of three children. Extensive tests would have to be run, of course, but the MAGI did not expect three to be even close to the Scorcher's limit, and there was no reason to disagree with the world's most powerful supercomputer.

But Ritsuko's thoughts were not about the Scorcher at the moment. What occupied her mind was the data being fed back into the sensors. In particular, the data from the rightmost video, showing a girl in a red plug suit, carelessly lying down with her arms behind her head. Her synchrograph was jumping all over the place, as if she was not even concentrating. Her Summarized Synchronization Value , or SSV, was barely above 20.

"Asuka, are you feeling well?" - Ritsuko leaned into the microphone on the side and opened a private two way channel with the capsule.

"Yes, I am feeling absolutely perfect, Doctor Akagi." - her cheerful tone was almost mocking her in reply - "Why ever might you be asking me a question like that?"

Ritsuko opened her mouth but stopped before any sound came out. Instead she leaned back into her chair and closed the channel.

"Interesting" - she murmured, picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. She swirled around the lukewarm liquid on her tongue, and hesitated before swallowing. She hated cold coffee.

"MAYA!" - Ritsuko called out to her unofficial aide, Maya Ibuki, who was always at her side for one reason or another, and fulfilled duties a secretary normally would. An audible gasp could be heard on the HQ-wide announcement system, as lieutenant Ibuki jumped off her seat when she heard her sempai call her. Ritsuko could hear the tapping of her shoes running through the corridor a while before her actual head popped around into the doorway.

"Yes, sempai?" - Maya stuck her face into the doorway, but hesitated to proceed any further into the room, which was the base of operations for the head NERV Japan scientist. The blonde swung around in her chair, still leaning back, and smiled.

"Please get me another coffee, if you would be so kind? This one is already below drinking temperature threshold." - Lieutenant Ibuki blushed and gave a deep bow, still standing in the doorway.

"Y-yes ma'am!" - the young NERV officer hurried out of the room in the direction of the lounge, nearly tripping on her way out of the door.

Ritsuko let out a giggle at her subordinate's behaviour - she was always eager to get anything the scientist requested of her - must be eager to advance up the ladder of NERV, she guessed. Smirking, she turned back to her screen and continued to monitor the test.

* * *

The test had concluded several minutes prior, but already Gendo Ikari held the still-warm printouts with the pilots' performance in his gloved hands. He sat in his command post above the MAGI and the bridge and mused over the numbers on the paper.

"Ikari, Shinji - 62 average, 59 low - GO advised.

Ayanami, Rei - 73 average, 72 low - GO advised.

Soryu, Asuka Langley - 20 average, 01 low - NO GO advised." - he read aloud, his dark oval glasses hiding any hint of emotion, aided by his plain, even tone of voice. He was very good at hiding his emotions. On the inside, however, his true feelings were closer to 'YOU GO SHINJI! YOU FINALLY BEAT THAT GINGER SNOB!'. But hell would freeze over before he would let anybody know how he truly felt about anything.

"Fuyutsuki, tell me. What do you make of this?" - Ikari semi-turned his head to face in the direction of Kozo Fuyutsuki, his second-in-command. "Why is the second child's score so low?" - he made his meaning clearer.

Ikari's former gray-haired mentor remembered what Doctor Akagi told him earlier while handing over the documents -

"_Shinji made a big improvement over his last test 19 months ago. And Rei's scores went down, but two percent is hardly significant - it might just be a deviation from her usual norm. But Asuka just looked like she wasn't even trying to concentrate. Or rather she was making a conscious effort to NOT get a passable score today."_

"I know what you are thinking, Ikari." - Fuyutsuki looked pensively at the AVE capsules being hoisted upwards to the storage compartments by giant metal bars and did his best at dodging the question - "If we are not going to go according to the previous scenario, it does not really matter who pilots, as long as they achieve our goals of destroying the angels". With that he leaned over the commander's shoulder and took the file Gendo had been looking at. "And what if this has nothing to do with faking it, what if her ability has really deteriorated this much?" - he continued.

"Impossible." - Gendo folded his arms over his mouth and leaned his chin into the makeshift stand - "All their genes were specifically configured for piloting. They should be able to sync regardless of their mental or physical state, as long as they put in enough effort into it." - He leaned to the left and unlocked a little drawer in the side of his heavy wooden desk. Inside, he grabbed some more yellow files and, with a swift movement, dropped them in front of himself on the desk. - "Regardless, if the second child does not wish to participate any longer, I have prepared contingency plans. Sitting and doing nothing this past year would have been a waste." - Gendo Ikari continued as he thoughtfully paged through the topmost folder on his desk.

"But you know very well SEELE would never allow something like this." - Fuyutsuki has seen that folder before and knew exactly what kind of information was contained therein.

"That is precisely why we are not going to tell them, Fuyutsuki." - Once he was satisfied with reviewing it, he picked up the folder and handed it over to his aide. - "We do not need the old farts anymore. We now have enough funding thanks to this very same agreement with the Self-Defence Force. Please contact them and inform them that, as of now, directive 55 is in effect."

Fuyutsuki nodded politely and walked off the commander's bridge. He turned right and headed for his office downstairs, clutching the folder marked "DIRECTIVE 55 - LEGION" under his left arm.

'I hope you still know what you are doing, Ikari.'

* * *

The clock in the girls' changing room showed the time to be just after five in the afternoon. The pilots were to dress themselves and be present in the briefing room in thirty minutes for a run-down of the results of today's sync test and a summary of their Saturday mission. Rei Ayanami, the first child and pilot of AVE unit-00, stepped out of the shower, wrapping a white towel adorned with a little red leaf and four letters that were too badly sown in to read, alongside big writing saying "Made in China". While that towel covered up her torso all the way from her generous bust down to her taut thighs, she used another one to cover her head and start rubbing out the liquid from her short blue bangs.

Rei was done drying her body and was halfway through putting her usual clothes back on - for her, normal clothes meant a white blouse and a blue-green skirt with wide straps that went over her shoulders , in other words, the Yui Ikari High uniform - by the time the semi see-through glass door leading to the showers swung open again and Asuka Langley Soryu, the pilot of unit-02, wrapped up in Chinese towels of her own, joined Rei in the room. She had a gleaming smile on her face, just like she has had the whole day, and was humming a tune as she headed towards her locker with a spring in her step, which was very un-Asuka-like.

The girl putting her bra on could not understand why the other girl, who was still drying her long red hair, was so happy. She had just failed her sync test completely, and from how she remembered Asuka at NERV before, her reaction should have been the exact opposite.

"Second child, why are you so enthusiastic? A failure is not something to be happy about." Rei turned around and faced the thin frame of the German pilot, determined to find out why she was behaving so paradoxically.

"Well, Wondergirl, why shouldn't I be?" - the redhead's tone made it seem as though Ayanami was asking an obvious question like 'Why is Shinji an idiot' or 'Why is Germany the best country in the world' - "The weather outside today is really great, and after today, I will probably never see you or that _idiot _ever again! Wunderbar, no?" - her tone was cheerful and condescending at the same time. Ayanami, who was only beginning to delve into the complexities of human relationships and speech for the first time in her life these past two years, could not really compute what Asuka really meant. A silence ensued as the girl with the red hair stared down the girl with the blue hair, expecting the latter to reply to her rhetorical question.

"You are weird, pilot Soryu." - the phrase was the only one she could express her current thoughts in, and it was enough to knock off the fake cheer off of her conversation partner.

"WHAAAAAT?!" - Asuka screamed, reverting to her usual, primal self - "You think I am weird? _You _think _I_ am weird? Let me tell you what is weird, Wondergirl, for starters, the fact that you are so happy about piloting. You might not show it, but deep inside, you are happy when someone else is giving you orders! You would even be happy to die if it was an order from your beloved commander!" - Asuka was gesturing and flailing her arms violently, and Rei calculated that if her movements continued getting more violent, proportionally to her increasing rage in her speech, she could very well lose a finger or two to one of the sharp, metallic lockers that dotted the room. - "Secondly, what is with that speech of yours? Honestly, you have been living on this earth as long as me and you haven't even figured out how to talk to others? Some genius you are. And what is with that blue hair? Why even dye it that colour? No wonder you haven't ever had a boyfriend yet, who wants to go out with somebody who could be called BluRei or something?!" - Rei took all of the "criticism" without saying a word, but at the end, slowly opened her mouth.

Deep inside, Asuka was hoping that this was it. - 'Finally! Rei will finally show she was not a lifeless doll, she is about to pour out all her anger at me, but that would not matter, because I won! I made her react!' As her thoughts went on, Rei's mouth continued to open wider and wider, until..

"Do you require a hug, pilot Soryu?" - The smile on pilot Soryu's face slowly slid down into a scowl.

"Wh-what are you saying?! Baka, the last person I would need a hug from is you! No, no! Get away from m-mmmmfff!" - The redhead's sounds of protest coming from her mouth were drowned in Rei's bra as Ayanami glomped her forcefully, Asuka's face held in the middle of Rei's chest. Asuka's slender frame could offer little in the way of resistance to the display of affection forced onto it, except flail the arms helplessly. But as it sank in that resistance was probably futile, Asuka's limbs went lax, and the only sign of displeasure she showed was her angry loud breathing into Rei's chest.

"There, there." - Ayanami consoled her victim with a pat on the head before letting go. Sensing freedom, Asuka jerked her body back, looking like she was about to cry. Laughter to tears in a minute flat - all in a day's work for German NERV pilots.

"B-BAKA! Are you trying to kill me or something?!" - Deciding not to risk her well-being any longer, Asuka stomped out of the room, jumping into her skirt and tossing on her T-shirt on her way out. - "Why are her boobs even that big! It's so unfair!" - Rei heard her continue her protests down in corridor B-1.

'What an.. unusual girl.' - Rei decided as she put on the rest of her clothing in preparation for the de-briefing. - 'She feels one thing, but keeps insisting she doesn't even when anybody can figure it out with ease. Is this just how some humans are by nature?'

* * *

Shinji Ikari, the pilot of unit-01 was already in the briefing room when a flash of red stormed inside. Shinji was already sitting in the centre chair out of the three provided for the teenagers, so as she passed the right chair, she grabbed it by the back, and demonstratively jerked up her nose high in the air, walking past Shinji, not even acknowledging him. He tried to form sounds in his throat to say something, but ultimately decided against it, the redheads demeanour at the moment was just too unpleasant. Having taken the chair all the way to the left of the other two, leaving Shinji on the furthest one to the right, and the middle one empty, Asuka sat down. Minutes passed in silence. The German teen took out her cell phone and started to play around with it, the bright screen lighting up the dark room, while Shinji just sat there, staring down at his hands folded on his knees. Using darkness as her cover, Asuka took a peek at Shinji's form. He continued to sit motionless on his chair, still facing the floor.

'He doesn't even have the balls to apologise when it is just the two of us. How spineless.' - suddenly she got the greatest urge to connect her foot to his chin. - 'Wondergirl better get here SOON. I won't be able to control myself much longer.' - she went back to fiddling with her cell, nervously tapping her foot.

Shinji lifted his eyes off the floor for the first time to face the source of the tapping sound to his left. Once again, he tried opening his mouth, but no words come out.

'Should I say something to her? Is this a good time? Or will she just go off at me, as always?' - he lowered his gaze back down. - 'What's the point, I'll just keep quiet.'

Asuka was already thinking about screaming at Misato and asking her to drag Rei in there so they could finally get this over with. She looked at her cell yet again. The little white numbers centred at the top of the screen read 5:27 PM. In the next instance, the silence was broken as the door slid open with a clang, and the blue-haired pilot they were waiting for walked in. Closing the door behind her, she proceeded past Shinji, sat down, and gave him a smile. Satisfied with his weak smile back, she turned to her right, with the same smile.

"Don't touch me.." - the girl on the left grumbled and shifted her weight to the left of her chair. Rei giggled at her reaction and turned forward to face the front of the room, where seconds prior another door slid open, this time revealing their school teacher and their Director of Operations, Misato Katsuragi. The Major, clad in her usual attire - a tight black thigh-length dress and a red leather NERV jacket - proceeded to sit down at the metal desk in front of the pilots.

"Right, we evaluated your scores and decided to go ahead with the operation tomorrow." - she looked over at the trio, then back into her notes. - "We have decided that the order of battle should be the following - Ikari Shinji, unit-01; Ayanami Rei, unit-00. Backup - Soryu Asuka Langley, unit-02." - Misato could hear the noise of somebody jumping up from a chair in front of her even before she finished her last sentence.

"Backup?! Why do I have to even be here, isn't my score low enough to be below the activation threshold?" - the pilot of unit-02 raged at her but Misato did her best to reply calmly.

"Even if your score was bad today, we still require you to be here, Asuka." - Major Katsuragi tried putting on a friendly expression for her former roommate, even though on the inside she was getting annoyed - "We are going to be executing an experimental procedure tomorrow, so you will have to be the backup in case it fails. You are still part of NERV, and we are going make you come, whether you like it or not."

Barely keeping her fiery temper in hold, Asuka stormed towards the back door. Before she disappeared from sight, Misato shouted one last thing towards her.

"We are meeting up in the lounge at 8, come prepared!" - relieved that Asuka didn't put up as much of a fight as she was expecting her to, she turned towards Rei and Shinji with a more relaxed expression. "Well, any questions?"

"No ma'am." - Rei replied, while Shinji just looked at Misato and shook his head.

"That's good." - Misato's smile grew bigger and she started stacking the papers strewn across the desk. - "Shinji-kun, I'll meet you in the parking lot in ten, okay?"

Shinji nodded again, got up, and followed Rei towards the door. Outside the main doors of the NERV building, it was time for them to part ways. Ayanami would take the train going up to the Tokyo-3 residential district, while Shinji was to wait in the parking lot for Misato to finish the paperwork. The parking lot was just to the right, and the rail terminal was a short walk straight ahead.

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow, Ayanami." - the blue-haired enigma turned around to face him, a hint of a smile on her soft lips.

"I guess you will, Ikari-kun. Goodbye." -she turned around and started to move towards the stairs, her schoolbag in hand. Shinji watched her walk away, and was about to do the same, but stopped himself and forced his throat to speak up.

"A-.. Ayanami!" - Fearful that no words would come out at all, he ended up forcing his voice box, resulting in a shout that reverberated in the air. Rei halted, then turned around and walked back to the source of the scream. Shinji was covering his mouth with his hand, fearful that Ayanami might punch him or exact some other form of violent revenge for shouting out her name so loudly. Rei, of course, did no such thing, just looking at Shinji with wide, interested red eyes blinked once in the middle of her blank expression.

"What is the matter, Ikari-kun?" - Yesterday, Shinji promised himself that today would be the day he brought himself to do this, and tried to summon all of his courage, but practicing in front of the mirror or in the dark of his room just as not the same thing. Putting his right hand on his left arm and rubbing it up and down nervously, he began speaking.

"W-well.. Umm.. " - His gaze lowered and his nervousness got the better of him. A part of Shinji wished that Ayanami would just decide that whatever he was trying to say, he couldn't say it, and just walk away; while another part of him dreaded that idea. But instead, Rei just stood there, her head cocked a bit to the side, blue bangs covering her right eye.

"Yes, Ikari-kun?" - Shinji could not take it anymore. This was do or die, fight or flight! He clenched his wrists and gathered up all his fortitude into one sentence.

"T-tomorrow, if ev.. everything goes well, would you.. Would you.. liketogogeticecreamwithmeafterorsomething?" - His face flared up as he shot out the last part in one breath. Despite his best efforts, Shinji could just not bring himself to say something like that in a more audible way. His mind was in torture. He was looking down at his feet and could not see Ayanami's face. Any second now, she would tell him to get lost, laugh at him and walk away. Any second now..

Instead, he was interrupted by a finger being thrust into his cheek. In surprise, Shinji lifted his gaze to meet Ayanami's. Her head was still cocked but her eyes widened a bit.

"Do you mean like a date, the ritual that couples engaged in a romantic relationship go through to affirm their feelings towards each other?" - her index finger swirled around in Shinji's cheek, before teaming up with the thumb to pinch it. She was obviously teasing him, but Shinji could see no hint of malice, or any expression at all, for that matter, on her face. Unable to cope with her emotionless face, Shinji lowered his head back down.

"If you don't want to, I understand, I wouldn't want to go with someone like my- " Once again, he was interrupted by Ayanami, this time verbally.

"Ikari-kun." - This time there was no finger feeling up his face, and her lips curved into a little smile. - "I shall come along. If it is with Ikari-kun, then it would be agreeable." - she turned around again and repeated her previous line - "Goodbye, Ikari-kun."

Shinji didn't see her leave. In fact, he did not hear her say goodbye either. Shock has temporarily disabled all the major senses of his body. His hearing was severely impacted in particular - instead of the usual evening noises of the street, his brain kept hearing someone else's speech over and over.

'I shall come along' 'It is agreeable' 'With you, Ikari-kun' 'I shall come along' 'It is ag-'

"Earth to Shinji-kun!" - a soft punch to the top of his head interrupted his hallucinations. He looked up, finally out of his trance to see Misato, holding her car keys with an apologetic expression on her face. - "Sorry I took so long with the paperwork, but it's usually a pain in the arse to begin with but now, with the" - She stopped mid-sentence and berated herself for saying as much already. The pilots were not supposed to know about this until tomorrow. - "Well forget about it. Thank you for waiting for me, Shinji-kun." - her face contorted into a mischievous smile - "But it's not like you could have walked home without me, right? Tee-hee."

Shinji looked around as they walked to her blue Porsche parked in the VIP section, and in between the empty parking lot and the fluorescent floodlights it dawned on him - the sun has already set. At least an hour passed by from the moment he last saw Rei until Misato's punch. Was he standing there by himself that whole time?

* * *

All of the pilots had a restless night.

On the top floor of an apartment building, a boy sixteen years of age, kept tossing and turning on his futon, and kept mumbling in his sleep. This had nothing to do with the loud snoring sounds coming from the room next to him, where an attractive, drunk, purple-haired NERV officer was sprawled across the sheets. The origins of his discomfort were inside his own dream.

"A-Ayanami.. I.. I can't eat anymore ice-cream.." - he mumbled, still asleep, drops of cold sweat dotting the boy's forehead . "Are you s-sure there is no way to.. get a second date without eating all this... uguuuu~"

Two floors down, in a single bedroom apartment, a pretty girl about the same age as the boy kept shifting around in her western-style bed, with her long red hair spread on her thick pillow, apparently suffering from the same malady - bad dreams.

"Wondergirl... no, not again, get away from me... don't grab me like that... mfff... can't... breathe... so big... my own feel inadequate... mff... EEP!"

The girl gave a surprised squeak as one of her shifts forced the centre of her body weight off the side of the mattress, and she made off a soft thud when she hit the floor.

"Uuuuu... stupid Wondergirl with her big boobs.." - She grumbled as she wrapped herself up in her blanket and dropped down in a chair beside her computer. She then freed her one arm out of the cocoon and reached with her finger for the power button. She decided that she might as well spend some time on the internet until she got tired enough to crawl back into the bed, still feeling shaken up after the fall. She flinched a little bit as the screen lit up her face in the dark room.

Miles away, in Tokyo-3's residential district, loud, constant clanging of construction work could be heard. Even in the early hours of the morning, work continued like it was midday. On one of the top floors of a nearby building, loud sounds could be heard from inside as well. On a bed, a girl having short blue hair lied down perfectly straight on her bed. She was the origin of the loud sounds - her snoring was loud enough to drown out the construction outside.

Well, at least two of the children had a restless night.

* * *

"We will be landing in about fifteen minutes from now, please fasten your seatbelt, lieutenant. "

"I know, I know." - the person who the attendant has just referred to as "lieutenant" started folding up her tray into the seat in front of her, and stared out of the window into the night sky. Below the private jet's white wing she could see the lights of Tokyo 3 getting closer and closer. Irritated that she was waken up from her dream, the young girl wearing a red striped skirt and a sleeveless white blouse swiped her hair back behind her right ear and closed her eyes in order to catch at least five minutes of sleep. The officials back on Hokkaido told her she would be having a long day tomorrow so she would be needing all the sleep she can get. She drifted off into sleep one more time as the plane neared the tarmac.


	3. Chapter 3 - Afterthoughts

_Disclaimer: I own no characters in this story. They are property of Gainax/Anno etc._

_Past _

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

CHAPTER 3

Afterthoughts

Birds chirruped out their morning melodies in the shine of the warm Saturday morning sun outside, oblivious to the trials that awaited Misato Katsuragi on that day. The NERV officer was covered in a warm, heavy white blanket from head to toe on her futon, strands of purple hair sticking out here and there. Her room looked a lot like that of a teenager - clothes, including frilly black underwear, were messed around on the floor, empty liquor bottles stood by the bedside, and some suspicious stains covered parts of the greyish walls. Shinji, her roommate, has countless times offered to clean her room before, but Misato, being Misato, refused every single time, indignantly stating that boys should not be allowed to go through a woman's possessions. In reality, however, she was just embarrassed of just in what bad state her room was. She worked two shifts - one as a substitute teacher at Yui Ikari High, and another as NERV Japan's operations director, technically being Gendo Ikari's third-in-command. Major Katsuragi-sensei would usually come home from work late, eat the dinner that Shinji would leave for her, have a shower, and plop back into bed. During the last year, her second line of work eased up and she did have it easy for a while. Now though, things would probably go back to the usual routine. On Saturdays, she normally had no classes and could rest at home until it was time to show up in the Geofront for her second line of work. But today was different.

-BEEP- -BEEP- -BEEP- -BEEP- -BEEP-

"Uugghhhh" - an unintelligible female groan came from underneath the bed sheets, and a slender arm stuck out, its hand shaped like a fist, and began pounding the wooden floor to its right, searching for the offending sound. With each strike, the hand came closer and closer to the source of the beeping, a tiny black alarm clock. As the arm swung down for the final time, one could not help but feel pity for the tiny mechanical device. The beeping stopped, replaced by steady ticks, indicating the critter was still alive. For now.

'It's Saturday.. I can sleep in just a bit longer...' - in Misato's mind, "a bit longer" usually meant several hours when it came to sleep.

"CRAP!" - Suddenly the cocoon sprang to life with a curse - "I completely forgot about what day it is!" - a head with dishevelled log purple hair emerged from inside and squinted at the alarm clock. - "Seven already?! We're going to be late!"

Misato jumped out of bed and hastily threw on her bath robe, and raced to the kitchen. What she saw in the sun-lit kitchen set her worries of being late at ease. Shinji was up, already wearing navy jeans and a white shirt with black print, and was having a go at his breakfast at the table. Judging by the black metal pan, which was lying in the kitchen sink, this morning, the chef of the house must have opted for a fried breakfast. And true enough, in front of the seat opposite to Shinji's stood a plate of food, consisting of an omelette, some bacon, toasted white bread and a side of salad. The woman let out a relieved sigh and headed over to the fridge. In the corner of the room, Pen-Pen, her pet penguin, was pecking away at some raw fish. As far as she could tell, Shinji had already taken care of everything.

"MoooOOOOAaaaaa... rning, Shinji." - A long yawn interrupted her greeting. Misato opened the fridge and grabbed a can of beer - an integral part of her meals. At Shinji's suggestion, which was more like nagging to her, she promised to cut down on beer. So now, she could only have beer every second day, and she was happy that today was one of those days.

"Hmm.. oh?" -. His look of concentration was broken when he heard Misato greet him, and lifted his gaze to meet hers - "Morning, Misato."- Misato did not notice it through her sleep-enveloped eyes at first, but Shinji wasn't really eating his food as much as just poking it around with his chopsticks.

"What's wrong, Shin-chan?" - Only when she sat down and set the beer beside her plate did she notice that the boy was off in his own world, playing with the food instead of eating. She leaned her face closer to him and allowed her lips to curl into a teasing smile. - "Is it gi-i-irl problems?"

"M-Misato!" - Shinji's face went as read as the bacon he was twirling in his chopsticks, which promptly dropped out of his hands. - "I.. It's not like that at all!"

"Oh, so snagging girls is that easy for you, hmm?" - Misato continued her assault - "Ah, just as expected of my little Shinji!" - she reached out across the table to ruffle Shinji's hair but with a practiced dodge, the boy moved his head to the side.

"It's got nothing to do with girls," - Shinji lied, trying to regain his composure - "I am just nervous about today, that's all." - He was not sure whether he should tell Misato just what he had asked Rei yesterday. What if it was some kind of weird Ayanami joke, or a hallucination from the chemicals in the LCL, and then he would end up looking like an idiot. But the part of him that believed that possibly the greatest day of his life was about to unfold, was really happy about it. So happy, it wanted Shinji to scream about it to anyone and everyone he saw today, leaving him torn between wanting to tell his guardian everything and keeping it a secret, just in case things did go pear-shaped.

- "Aw, you're no fun at all. It used to be so much easier to tease you before" - the major complained with a mock pout. - "At this rate, nothing short of flashing would get you flustered" - she teasingly grabbed the collar of her robe and twirled it suggestively in her fingers.

"Misato! Please go take a shower and get dressed already, we are running late as it is." - he turned away in hopes of hiding the red colour on his face from the expert teaser, unaware that his crimson ears remained in full view, making the efforts vain. In turn, she laughed, and shoved the remains of her omelette in her mouth, then started stacking the dirty cutlery and dishware on the table onto her plate, ending up with a ceramic-metallic-beercanic tower.

"All right, all right. It's fine if you don't feel like telling me. It's only healthy for boys your age to have secrets" - Misato dropped the complicated construction she had been holding into the sink and headed for the shower. But before she disappeared behind the wooden sliding door of the bathroom, her ears picked up soft speech from the room.

"I.. I asked Rei out.. I think." - The dark-haired boy finally made up his mind, deciding it would be worth it to tell her. His voice was not too loud, he was speaking quietly into the floor, as if he were afraid the first child herself could hear him. Misato swung her head in his direction, intrigued by this new development. Never before has he told her about stuff like that. Maybe he was finally accepting her as his parent figure, and this was Misato's chance to cement that position in his life.

"About time!" - She gave him a thumbs up and giggled like a highschooler. A parent figure was something she would never be. "And?"

"And.. She said yes... I think." - Yesterday's events were so distant in his mind, the poor boy already started to have doubts if what happened yesterday afternoon was a hallucination or a dream.

"Way to go Shinji! So I _was_ right!" -Misato gave him a playful wink and continued into the bathroom. She continued the conversation from behind the closed door - "Of course I would have asked Ricchan to slip some sort of aphrodisiac into her LCL if she said no, and all you would have to do would be make sure she sees you first and not Asuka when she gets out of the capsule! Easy, right?"

"T-That's not how aphrodisiacs work at all!" - The thought of the two beautiful AVE pilots together, in dripping, wet, LCL-drenched plug suits was enough to make any man stir. Misato was on a roll today, all of her verbal jabs connected square with Shinji's cheek veins. - "Anyway, she already said yes, so please don't do something inappropriate like that! I know how you and Ritsuko operate." - his request was met by a burst of shrill laughter behind the wooden door.

"I'm only joking Shin-chan, but now that I think of it, Ricchan does have a whole cabinet stocked full of chemicals she makes herself. I wouldn't bet against a bottle or two of it being there. Anyway - what are you guys gonna do?"

"I asked her to could grab some ice-cream with me after today's mission" - Only now did it sink in to his head that quite a serious obstacle ahead before he could enjoy his date. Battling angels is no easy task, far from child's play. All angel encounters had a real probability of being injured or worse, any day on this job could be his last. Should anything happen today, he would never get to.. No, no. He brushed depressing thoughts away like the NERV counsellor had taught him. Being positive is half the job; get into the right mindset - and nothing can stop you.

"Aw, how cute!" - It got harder to hear Misato as she turned on the water in the shower and began sticking her arm in the stream, trying to adjust the water to be just the right temperature before she would walk in. "Hey, there's that new mall that opened up in downtown, what was it called again?.. The something-tower or something.. Well anyway, it's got a Haagen-Dazs, and you could even go see a movie afterwards right? A movie is just the right setting for the whole arm-over-the-shoulder drape and everything! You can even sneak a kiss in if you play your cards right, tee-hee." - Misato remembered just how _much_ more Kaji used to sneak in at the movies with her back in the day. Memories like those brought a variety of emotions nostalgia, sadness, anger, even pride about the fact that she "graduated" from that sort of carefree life all the way to caring for a child.

"Don't worry Misato! You don't have to do that much!" - Shinji refused frantically, remembering just how much he hated being in the same car as her. He had no wish to have his budding romance and life cut short by the driving skills, or lack thereof, of a certain air-headed NERV officer. "I thought we could take the train or something.."

"Puuu~! Well suit yourself." - She was well aware of the types of jokes that made their weekly rounds at the HQ. This week's one was - _There are 3 types of drivers: good drivers, women drivers, and Misato Katsuragi._

"It's got nothing to do with anybody's driving!" - Even though Misato did take all of the joking as just that, Shinji was not the kind of person who could enjoy teasing somebody, even if it was just play. He was just not that kind of person. He tried to quickly think of an excuse to not hurt her feelings, but the best he could come up with was - "I just thought it would be more... romantic to take the train." - His face flared up again at the last sentence, but it seemed to have the desired effect on the purple-haired kamikaze driver.

"Nice save, Shin-chan! I can see why you do so well with girls!" - Looking up at the showerhead, she smiled genuinely. All teasing aside - this was his first date - as far as she knew, and even though Shinji was not her child, she was really proud that he was growing up. 'I guess this is what a mother feels like.'

* * *

The August sun was heating up the parking lot tar outside Geofront entrance 1-B. The time was 7:30 AM when a black Ford Mustang with government license plates pulled up from the nearby road. At the metal gates in front of the parking lot, it was halted by a few guards in cream uniform, and forced to show the innards of the boot and to let its driver out for a quick identity check. A man, wearing simple business attire - a blue button-up shirt and black pants with a plain belt - slowly stepped out, closed the door, and handed the guards a little laminated card with his details. The guard studied the photograph of Lt. Ryoji Kaji, First Recon, JGSDF, intently for a few seconds and then turned back to the man. The dark-haired Mustang owner turned his head thirty degrees to the left and put on a suave smile. Now he looked _exactly_ like his image on the photo. Ever since he got this new ID card, he always wanted to do this. Kind of like a certain British comedian in a certain pre-impact movie, only more handsome. And with a less ridiculous-looking photograph. And a pony tail.

The guard, not amused by his antics in the slightest, gave a barely visible nod and proceeded to give him directions.

"The entrance is on the far side over there. You can take your vehicle inside, it will be towed down to the Geofront along with-"

"Thank you, but I have been here before." - Kaji interrupted, extending his arm in the guard's direction.

"Right" - the man said, putting back the ID card into Kaji's outstretched hand. - "But we shall be unable to let you through any further than that by yourself, we have been instructed to allow through only the Hokkaido group." - The MP5 sub-machinegun hung over his shoulder proved that they were indeed in a position to decide who goes through and who does not.

"Don't worry." - Kaji jumped back into the driver's seat and turned his keys, starting the engine. - "In that case, I will just wait for them there."

* * *

By the time a blue Porsche screeched to a stop at the gates, the time was already 7:54. One of the guards nervously gripped the stock of his MP5, suspicious of the car's aggressive behaviour, but his attitude changed as soon as he saw a familiar face stick out of the driver's window.

"If you don't let us through this instance you are all fire-e-ed!" - NERV's third-in-command's high pitched scream of anger was enough to send the three guard scrambling onto their feet and racing to swing open the metal doors guarding the way into the Geofront. As soon as Misato perceived there to be enough of a gap for her to stick the car through, she shifted into second and floored the pedal. - "Thank you!" - Another scream, just as loud as the first, informed the trio that they, probably, would not be getting sacked after all.

"Crap, crap, crap! We're gonna be late, Shinji!" - Misato fidgeted nervously with her ID card when she stopped at the checkpoint separating the Geofront from the outside world. After fumbling with it for a good twenty seconds, she finally grasped it in a grip strong enough to swipe it in the receiver next to the car's window.

"Well, what's the big deal, Misato-san? I'm sure it's fine if we are late by just a couple of minutes." - Shinji tried to calm her down, watching the red and white striped boom lift itself in front of the Porsche.

"You don't understand! I made a bet with Ritsuko that I will not be late for work even once this month." - Once again, Misato violated the gearbox and sent the car flying towards the elevator inside the dark tunnel. "And you _don't_ want to know what's at stake." - She turned to look at the young pilot with intimidating eyes that told him 'Seriously, you really don't.'.

As soon as she was sure about her angles of approach, Misato twisted out the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes. For a second, Shinji was angry. He would not get to go out with Ayanami today. He will never grow up to see adulthood. He is about to die. He clenched his fists and closed his eyes, preparing for the inevitable.

When the pain did not come, he ordered his eyes open, and, to his surprise, he was not even close to dying. On the contrary, Misato was smiling, looking extremely chuffed with her own driving. This time, she calculated everything perfectly, and drifted right into one of the open spots on the elevator. Seconds later, they were on their way down into the Geofront.

* * *

"Hurry Shinji!" - A dark-haired woman ran at full speed through the NERV access hallway, sweeping aside lab workers and security personnel. Those that were fast enough to react, and avoid getting knocked over by the angry Major Katsuragi with the pilot of AVE-01 in tow, had to nestle themselves against the blue walls or take cover in the nearest doorway. She checked her watch again - 7:59. Swinging her limbs wildly in a dash to the employee lounge, which she could see just ahead, Misato sped up for one final push. Shinji, who could barely keep up with her half a minute after they first left the car, could put no more energy into the sprint, and now limply hung from the Major's right arm, which she had been using for the last fifty meters to drag him across the sterile tile floor. With one last stretch of her left arm, worthy of an Olympic swimmer, she reached for the button on the keypad next to the door, releasing hydraulic pressure and making the metal slide open.

"Yes! I'm on time!" - Her triumphant stance in the doorway was greeted by several pairs of curious eyes. She suddenly felt a very distinct need to turn back time and enter the room in a different fashion.

Several seconds earlier, Ritsuko sat on the couch next to Rei, giving the blue-haired pilot last-minute instructions. Next to the coffee machine stood Kaji, trying his hardest to escape another of Asuka's riveting tales of how great she is and why he should take her out to dinner. Behind Kaji, looking a bit intimidated by the red-haired menace, was a girl Shinji had never seen before. She was staring down at the floor, her hands timidly folded on her chest. She looked like she wanted to take off her uncomfortable navy blue plug suit with black stripes on her thighs, put her normal clothes on and go home. As soon as the door opened several seconds ago, revealing a strange purple-haired woman, for some reason shaking her fist in the air as a victory gesture, and a young teenage boy, trying hard to pull himself to his feet, using the woman's right arm and the floor for balance, she lifted her gaze towards the pair.

'That must be Ikari Shinji-kun, the pilot of unit-01' - The dark haired girl standing next to Kaji remembered the dossiers she was handed over in preparation for today, and tried to get a good look at the face of the brown-haired boy, who was fighting a battle to get to his feet. When he finally straightened up, the brown-haired military trainee could finally have a better look. He had brown eyes, matching short hair and a lost expression.

'He.. he is kind of... cute... I guess... But he has all these other pretty girls around him, it's not like I'd even have a chance... The scary one is European, and her face is really beautiful too.. And that one on the couch has really big.. Uwaa~, what am I thinking! I am not here to get dates, I am here to pilot AVE and..' - her brain suddenly stopped in its tracks as Mana realised something important. - 'Eeek, he was looking right at me!' - She quickly turned her gaze back down to the white tile on which her right foot stood, her face lighting up to be a couple of shades redder than the European girl's plug suit. 'Stupid, stupid, stupid! He will think I am some kind of pervert now! What if he goes and reports me, then I can kiss my career goodbye! Nobody will want to hire a dirty perverted girl, not the military, not anybody! Stupid!' - But before the temperature in her cheeks could get any closer to melting point, Misato's yelp of surprise stopped her mental agony.

"K-Kaji?!" Major Katsuragi's eyes lit up with anger when they came across their owner's twice-ex-boyfriend standing in the lobby. - "Ritsuko, what is _that_ man doing here?"

"_This_ man is here to save the day" - he smirked, pointing his one hand's thumb at himself, while putting his other hand on the brown hair of the girl next to him. She jolted upwards from the surprise contact that broke her concentration, before her face went red again from her own embarrassing reaction.

"He is just escorting his protégé to NERV, Misato" - the lab doctor replied calmly, unfazed by her reaction to their old friend. Something of the sort was to be expected.

"Humph. He does not need to be here. Make sure somebody escorts him out." - Paying no heed to the pony-tailed army officer in plain clothes, the NERV head of operations walked up to the fidgety girl and, chasing any kind of thought about Kaji away, smiled as she greeted her. "And you must be Mana-chan, right?"

The girl timidly nodded, then, as if suddenly remembering a routine she memorized, bowed down deeply and straightened up hastily, touching her right temple with the tips of her fingers in a salute.

"Hai! Private First-Class Mana Kirishima, First Virtual Warfare Division! Pleasure to meet you, Katsuragi-senpai!" - She shot out her greeting all in one breath, cutely puffing her chest out like a veteran soldier would when receiving an award.

"No need to be so formal, we are all friends here." - Misato tried to make her friendliest face, hoping to make the jumpy girl feel at home. "You can just call me Misato-san."

"Oh, okay." - Mana nodded, a tad upset that her practiced greeting was not of any use, but at the same time relieved that her new commander was such an easy-going person.

"You've met everybody here, right?" - Misato gestured to the rest of the room, where, for some reason, Rei waved her hand.

"Y-yes. Kaji-san already introduced me."

"Well then, you've met me, so the only one left is-" -Misato turned back to her roommate, "This is-"

"Ikari Shinji, pilot of uni-" As soon as the words left Mana's lips, she realized she had said something she should not have. The girl let out a sharp gasp and tightly clasped them around her mouth, in a futile attempt to prevent herself from letting words that she has already said escape.

"Oh, so you two know each other already?" - Misato was sure that the two have never met before. In return, the brunette's face started going red again, and after a few seconds of a panicked look on her face, she swung her body to face Shinji and hastily bowed again.

"I'm so sorry! I've just been reading the intelligence files and memorized details about you and the others! Please do not think I am some kind of creep!" - Looking like she could burst into tears at any second, the brunette was quickly comforted by the boy, who could not really understand why she was so on edge.

"N-no, don't worry!" - Shinji couldn't let her beat herself up over such a random, harmless thing, and he did his best to try and dam up the tears, which could start flowing over at any moment. "I think... remembering stuff like that could really help.." - He was never sure what to do or say in situations like this, so he just blurted out the first thing that came into his mind, and the words did seem to have a little calming effect.

"Really?" - Mana's face lit up, this time not with a blush, but with joy and hope, and a shy smile crept in on her pale, rather cute face for the first time. "You don't think it was creepy?"

"UGH! Get a room already!" - The redhead rolled her piercing ocean-blue eyes at their reaction. "This is your standard anime cliché - girl meets boy, girl blushes, girl thinks she is at fault for something, boy assures her that it was not true, bla bla, they kiss, the END." - Asuka stood in the corner, annoyed, her arms restlessly folded on her chest.

"I don't like him!"

"I don't like her!" - the two replied almost simultaneously.

"I did not say you did eithe-er." - with a smug grin, the German girl melodically pointed out what exactly the two assumed she has said. "It looks like you two do after all. Just get to the kiss and get it over with quickly, won't you? I have four gigs of unwatched series and anime waiting for me at home, so the sooner we finish, the sooner I could get back to more interesting things than this."

Back on the couch, Rei sat frozen, biting her index finger in thought at the developments in front of her. An emotion the albino has never experienced before was racing through her heart and pumping blood to her puffed cheeks. For once, she agreed with Asuka. Ayanami also wanted to finish as soon as possible, so she could go get ice-cream with Ikari-kun.

'Today is a particularly sunny and hot day. I shall require the frozen dairy dessert as soon as possible in order to remain at a comfortable temperature.' - she thought. 'It appears Pilot Kirishima will only happen to interfere with the plans. I must keep her away from Ikari-kun for today.' - Ayanami's look of concentration was interrupted by the red-headed troublemaker.

"Aw, Wondergirl is jealous too!" - Rei snapped back to reality to see a smirking face, party covered by red bangs. Asuka was bending down in front of the sitting albino, so that her face was centimetres from Rei's - "Wittle commandew's pet can't take some competition, hmm?" - Asuka pursed her lips to make herself sound like a child.

"I am not jealous, piwot Sowyu." - halfway through Rei's words, Asuka clamped her fingers around Rei's cheek, making her sound like the German girl did beforehand.

"I see things are heating up here." - Kaji finally spoke up from besides the door, using Asuka's diversion as means to escape. "If you need me, I will be doing industrial espionage in the hangars." - A vicious look from Misato made him regret his attempted joke immediately. "Shinji-kun - don't make the same mistake I made - go for the least feisty one." - Winking at the boy, he disappeared quickly behind the metal door. Just in time too, because Misato had grabbed several tins of black coffee, and was ready to initiate a heavy artillery barrage with her arms. Her ex-lover successfully escaped, leaving Misato steaming from her nose in anger, and the room in disarray. Rei and Mana were busy chasing Asuka around the room, while Shinji was going off at the redhead verbally, criticising her eternal teasing.

"Enough!" - the situation was defused by Misato, who finally exacted some authority upon the explosive situation. "Rei, Mana - proceed to the hangars!" - The two girls, who had already begun to corner the instigator at the vending machine had to stop and turn around, before they could administer a just beating to the giggling Asuka. Turning around to face the girl in the red plug suit, Mana let out what she thought was a threatening growl. In response, Asuka stuck out her tongue.

"Asuka! To the bridge with me!" Misato grabbed her by her right ear, and pulled the European girl towards her command centre.

"Ow ow ow! I'm sorry Misato! Let go, you will ruin my beautiful face shape!" - Paying no heed to her words, Major Katsuragi spoke to Shinji before she could disappear in the corridor.

"For Pete's sake, stop daydreaming about girls and get changed Shinji! If you're not in the Interim in ten minutes, I'm calling your father over for dinner again!" - Shinji shuddered at the thought. Last month, that particular experiment hadn't gone down too well. That time, Gendo proceeded to devour all the food in their fridge and then, for the next six hours, usurped Shinji's gaming console to play perverted dating simulation games. While Misato, knocked out by the effects of alcohol, did not care, Shinji refused to show up for school for the whole of next week, dealing with his own mental trauma by clearing out Misato's whole beer stash in five days. Needless to say, he was not keen for a repeat of the events.

"I'm not daydreaming about anybody, Misato-san!"

With that weak reply, he finally set off towards the changing rooms.

* * *

Asuka watched the monitors displaying the pilots in their capsules. She sat at one of the vacant seats at the bridge, right next to Maya. The redhead had unceremoniously stuck her feet out and rested them on the control panel, putting them next to where the dark-haired bridge bunny was working. If Maya was not of such timid nature, a punch or two would have been long thrown. But instead, Maya limited herself to stern looks towards her sixteen year old colleague.

The redhead was not paying any attention to Maya. Earphones plugged in, the only thing she was concentrating on was the video feeds. Mana's one in particular. Even though Asuka was glad a replacement was found, which rid her of the burdens of piloting, something primal stirred inside her. Mana's projected sync ratio was a whole two percent higher than what Asuka could manage two years ago on her last test. The number 52 was etched into her mind since then. On the inside, she was not happy at all. Asuka glanced towards her own grey metal capsule, which lay unconnected in one of the corners of the hangar, red and black wires strewn around on the cement floor. A part of her wished she could be inside.

'No! I do not want to be inside at all! Why should I even care what sync ratio that useless military bitch gets, it's none of my business anymore.' - she pressed her fingers hard at the side of the white iPod she was holding, making the volume bar jump up. The loud techno could surely silence out her unwanted thoughts.

"All clear given, sync start is a go."

"Very well." - Misato surveyed the hangar one more time. Everything seemed to be in order, and the technicians looked up at her in anticipation. - "AVE units 00, 01 and 03-"

"LAUNCH!"


	4. Chapter 4 - Another World

_Disclaimer: I own no characters in this story. They are property of Gainax/Anno etc._

_Past _

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

CHAPTER 4

Another World

"AVE units 00, 01 and 02..."

"LAUNCH!"

* * *

This was where Misato Katsuragi's authority ended and Ritsuko Akagi's own one started.

"Powering up Scorcher"

"Engaging primary connections."

"PrimCons opened, no bugs detected. Deploying anaesthetic."

* * *

Inside his capsule, Shinji felt another familiar faint smell mix in to the scent of blood of the LCL. It smelled of spirit and medicine, and it took only seconds before it started taking its effect - he felt his body relaxing and his mind slipping away. He shifted his body into a more comfortable position in the leather seat, and saw a familiar screen light on the right side of his "cabin". Yellow text of the several-thousand page-long program enabling his mind to bend the Interim to his will faintly lighted up the otherwise-dark tiny metal prison. He was supposed to know it off by heart, what each function and each void did, to be more efficient at his job, but to be completely honest - he only knew the basics, which Ritsuko herself outlined to him in emails and meetings that they had in his first month of piloting AVE. Unlike Asuka, who already got a university degree in Germany at 14, and Rei, who used to spend all of her free time battling with heavy programming textbooks and studying the lines of her own program's code, he was never any good at it. By the time his father called him up to the HQ to help get rid of the fourth angel, Shinji had never done any programming at all, he was not even that good with computers. The latter had changed by now, but his programming was still sub-par by the standards the other two girls set, and he still relied on Ritsuko to run tests on it, debug it, and improve it whenever possible.

* * *

"00 response nominal. 01 response nominal. 03 response nominal. Scorcher ready for deployment."

Ritsuko Akagi had a final look at the telemetry they were getting from the three children. Their vital signs, heart rates and projected synchrographs were all within expected limits, and it looked safe to link them up to the first angel.

"Remove bandwidth limiters."

"Removed, Senpai."

"Program start."

"Start engaged."

Detecting no anomalies on the sensors, the blonde doctor leaned back in her chair nervously and took another sip of the coffee Maya brewed for her several minutes prior. It was still hot, just the way the doctor liked it.

'Good luck, Shinji. Rei. Mana.'

* * *

_1. #include "ScorcherUnit01Hook.h" _

_ 2. #include conio.h _

_ 3. / Initialize static members _

_ 4. / _

_ 5. bool CHook::debugInitialized = false; _

_ 6. DebugHooks ScorcherUnit01Hook::debugHooks; _

_ 7. ScorcherUnit01Hook * ScorcherUnit01Hook::threadHook; _

_ 8. mapfarproc, farproc="" ScorcherUnit01Hook::int3hooks; _

_ 9. _

_ 10. _

_ 11. / Constructor _

_ 12. ScorcherUnit01Hook:: ScorcherUnit01Hook () _

_ 13. { _

_ 14. m_hookFrom = NULL; _

_ 15. m_hookTo = NULL; _

_ 16. m_target = NULL; _

_ 17. memset(entryStub, 0, sizeof(entryStub)); _

_ 18. bHooked = false; _

_ 19. stubLen = 0;_

Shinji saw the text on his right begin to scroll rapidly, which could only mean one thing - they will be engaging the angel very soon. After a two year break, he felt the familiar burning sensation on the top of his skull - the neural clips, now hooked up to thick wires going out from the top end of the capsule, opened up a path for Adam to hook into his brain, and the third child, in turn, to hook into his. Now, compounded to the sensation of his mind slipping away, it felt as if his whole body was being lifted up. Up and out of the capsule, all the way into a different dimension. The pain in his temples got too intense, and he passed out. The last words from his own world he had heard were those of Maya Ibuki.

"Transfer complete."

* * *

The first child, Rei Ayanami, opened her eyes and slowly rose to her feet, helping herself up by thrusting her dark-blue staff against the ground, and looked around. Dusting off her floor-length blue dress, she started looking around for the other two children. She could see Shinji and Mana propped up against a thick-trunked tree at the edge of the forest outside Tokyo-3. They looked like they were still unconscious, so Rei set off towards the forest and her two comrades.

This time, their objective was on one of the tall hills surrounding Tokyo-3, where, according to sensor data, it had arrived two nights prior, but has taken no further action. Behind Rei, the tall buildings of the mirror image of her home city rose into a clear blue sky, in front of her - a vast green forest spread itself out. The hem of her aquamarine dress dragged along the dirt of the path she was proceeding on, she had to take care not to step on it. She had done it once before, tearing her dress apart, revealing half of her naked body, and the mission had gone horribly astray since they had to bring the third child out of Adam in order to treat him for a severe nose bleed.

* * *

_The voice of Misato Katsuragi was tearing through Shinji's head._

_"You only have to hold out for 29 seconds, got it? It is possible Rei will kill him on her first hit, but the chances of that are less than 10 percent, so don't count on it! It is going to hurt, so be prepared, all right?"_

_'Got it, Misato-san.' - He looked up from his position at the fake Tokyo-3, as he called it. Just above the tallest building he could see a tiny blue speck - the sixth angel. They did not know what armament he had but yesterday he had left both Rei and Shinji with gaping holes in their bodies. Right after Shinji felt a searing pain through his chest, he saw the albino's beautiful head get split in half right in front of him, as she kneeled to check on him. Dying was not a good feeling. Not at all. He was still feeling an itch where his chest was penetrated yesterday - his sync ratio was particularly high, so, even today, he had still trouble breathing in the real world. Quite a nasty mark was left on his chest as well. As for Rei, she never complained, but Shinji saw her taking tons of painkillers, her head must still be feeling like it is splitting in half._

_But overnight, Ritsuko had made significant changes to both of their programs. Shinji's shield was now seven point three times stronger than usual - but he had to sacrifice his only weapon in exchange. He now was a fully-defensive unit, who had to protect Ayanami, in the likely case the angel would retaliate in response to her shot. Rei's task was shooting the angel down. The changes in the coding made her staff significantly longer. Now, instead of being just shorter than her body length, the blue weapon was several times that. It was so uncomfortable to hold that they would have to find a safe place outside Tokyo-3 where they could set up a position to shoot it from a prone position. The angel would attack anything approaching the city in the Interim with some kind of high-energy pulse beam, which the two pilots experienced on themselves first-hand. It was not affecting anything in the real world, which was obviously good news, otherwise a full-scale massacre could well be expected._

_"Ikari-kun." - Shinji's musings were interrupted by the first child's calm voice. A tiny bit startled, the boy turned around to face his comrade-in-arms. The blue-haired fourteen year-old was struggling to keep her staff upright, holding the twisting middle part with both hands, while the double-edged tip that held up a seemingly weightless blue ethereal orb stuck up high among the leaves and treetops. "I am ready to begin."_

_Shinji did not reply. He froze in place, mouth gaping open in silence._

_"Ikari-kun? What is wrong?"- The albino was unsure of Shinji's reaction and of what brought it on. The weight of her weapon was weighing down hard on her joints and muscles, and she wanted to get into position as soon as possible. But the brown-haired boy's only reply was an outstretched arm, index finger pointing towards the girl. His mouth still agape, no explanation was offered to Rei. She looked down at where Shinji had been pointing and noticed that the dress appeared to be torn, which must have occurred when she was hauling her staff through the dense growth of the forest._

_"My attire will not be a problem. We must hurry up and finalize our sniping position." - But the third child had already passed out. Rei, oblivious to the effect her torn dress and half-exposed chest had on her fellow pilot, did not hesitate to contact the HQ._

_"Katsuragi-san! The third child is injured, the angel might have increased its radius of effect, I am observing heavy blood loss from Ikari's face."_

_"Get them out of there NOW, Ritsuko!" - the familiar voice roared through her head._

* * *

_Twenty minutes later, Rei was closing the door of Doctor Akagi's office back at NERV HQ, where the blonde doctor was finished explaining some stuff to the first child. Ayanami shut it very carefully, as if to avoid anybody hearing her or taking note of her. Her gaze was lowered to the floor and her face bright red. Who would have known that a girl's exposed chest could have such a completely mission-impairing effect on boys! _

_'Why are my cheeks burning?'_

* * *

Keen to avoid a repeat of those events, this time Rei redesigned her dress herself, making it more modest and sturdy, and this time adding undergarments - an absence of which was an oversight she had not noticed at first. Now that she knew the importance of those, Rei could not help but wonder at times why doctor Akagi would leave those out of her initial programs.

Busy reminiscing, she didn't notice the time pass until she was already next to the other two pilots. Shinji, clad in his usual white armour from head to toe, was leaning unconscious against a tall pine tree, his double-edged sword with the inscription "Suscéptor" lying down a few feet away. She has seen Shinji's Interim body countless times, so instead, Rei turned her attention to the newcomer.

Mana Kirishima, who was lying down on the other side of the tall tree, right hand under her cheek, was breathing peacefully. Her other arm, or rather the front end of it, was hidden underneath a giant colourful thick metal pipe. Her chest and legs were hidden by similar constructions. The albino noticed that just like Asuka's, Shinji's and her own weapons, Mana's pipe similarly also had an inscription.

'_Machinatum_' - The first child read it silently. She then looked back on the form of the brown-haired teenager. Indeed, she did look like her Interim form _was_ ,in fact, engineered. Remembering a handful of sci-fi movies that she had watched along with everyone at one of Shinji's parties, she decided the colourful mix of blue and green metal parts did, in fact, look like some kind of machine or mecha limbs.

Rei looked up at the clear, blue sky. Both of the others looked like they were still unconscious, and from Ritsuko's constant lecturing, she knew that waking them up before they crossed over themselves could lead to incomplete transfers, and needing to start the process over. She sat down next to the same tree, taking care to fold the bottom of her blue garment properly. Then Ayanami proceeded to take off her gold helmet-like crown and shook her head from side to side, letting her blue bangs free. She had always wondered whether her Interim clothes - a long dress, golden headgear, and the inscription on her spear-like staff - "_Regina_" - had any connection. It seemed obvious that they did, but could there be more to it? One peculiar thing about the pilot's appearance was the code's inability to drastically change the pilot's appearance. For several years Ritsuko had been running tests on Rei's AVE codes, and any significant changes were met with a reset. It was as though Adam was not letting her change the appearance. The code would simply reset to its old version and execute that. But smaller changes that did not affect the look too much could still go ahead. For example - Rei's own changes to her dress structure. At one point last year, Asuka went through a stage of dying her hair blonde, and tried to change her code to match her real-life hair. If only the base could see the resulting mess of different shades of bright orange, she would have been the butt of countless "ginger" jokes at the HQ for days.

So was what they looked like now what the angels wanted them to look like? Was it the way Adam saw them? There should not even be any kind of feedback at all, since all the Scorcher was just a bunch of brain cells with no consciousness attached.

* * *

Back in the Hangar, Ritsuko connected her own monitor screen at her post to the giant LCD hanging on the hangar's wall, which was usually used for emergency broadcasts from the bridge, or for other general purposes, via a thick, long cable dropping all the way down from the bridge. This time, instead of Gendo's unpleasant face, the screen would offer the world something which the scientist hoped would be more pleasant. With all the equipment and technology that the dozens of military trucks hauled from the NERV airport outside Tokyo-3 this morning, new possibilities presented themselves. Part of Mana's new code allowed a neural connection to be attached to her skull, and then information would be decoded to allow a very crude video stream. It had to be without sound, but NERV scientists already had that covered. Today, for the first time ever, non-pilots would be able to see what the Interim looked like. And if any Seers happened to be in the room, they could even catch a glimpse of the next angel.

On the bridge, most of the technicians and staff were relaxed. Misato was resting her head on her bent arm in her seat - half-awake and half-asleep, she lazily scrolled through the data the telemetry sensors were picking up. After all, getting up at seven was not her usual modus operandi, and she could hardly be blamed. Misato did not know half of what the numbers and readings meant, and hoped that the little show Ritsuko was preparing will keep her awake.

Just in front of her, a girl whose hair colour could be debated to vary from light red to auburn, now sat with her knees brought up to her chin, both feet on the chair with her. The red plug suit she was wearing was half-unzipped at the back. It was not fit to be worn outside capsules with LCL inside, the tight-fitting latex made it too hard to keep oneself from sweating. Misato, however, had ordered her to keep it on at all times today, so the girl would rather show a bit of skin, instead of smelling like a serf.

'But I swear, if that perv Hyuga stares at my arse again...' - Asuka's thoughts trailed off as she remembered the G36 she kept in the closet of her apartment. Yeah, that's what she could do. Unleash hell in return, upon everyone who has given her hell over the years. All pilots had to go through compulsory marksmanship training. They were valuable assets and were required to be able to defend themselves. Out of the three original NERV pilots, the German was probably the best shooter, and the girl had no doubt - if she could follow that four-eyes home, and scout for a suitable position in the nearby buildings, his next walk home would be his last. Then she could go for that baka-Shinji. No, she would not hurt him too bad, just put a bullet in each of his knees, and watch him drag himself on his arms through the pain. He would probably cry and scream like the coward he is. _She_ had felt pain way worse than mere bullets to the knees, and _she_ had never cried. 'And after the cry-baby - hmm. Tight call between Gendo and Fuyutsuki...' - She suddenly stopped herself. Was she really thinking about disturbing things like that?

'Ugh, I guess the psychologist _was_ right, there really _is_ something wrong with me...' - Asuka started to nervously fidget with her phone, when she saw a tiny number 1 in the left upper corner. She opened the message immediately, hoping it would get her mind off sinister things.

"I completely forgot! We have to finish the science project as soon as you are done! So please rip the angel's throat out as soon as possible, Asuka-chan! Good luck (≧∇≦)/" - The number told her it was from Yuuna, the only person outside NERV who knew about her piloting AVE.

'Oh great. I forgot as well.' - But she was terribly happy to receive it even if it meant staying up late on a school night just to finish a useless project for something as pointless as _school_. It reminded her that there was some good in this world. That she still had some friends.

* * *

"How is this, senpai?" - on the hangar floor, a blonde and a brunette with same-length shirt hair were tangled up in dozens of wires of different sizes and colours. The brunette was inches away from blushing - her thigh had been brushing against her superior's butt for the last several minutes.

"Now plug in the other cable, Maya" - Ritsuko's head was the only part of her body sticking out from inside of a metal container with wires, connections and circuit breakers. Maya's head was sticking out on the opposite side, where the business end of the large screen was.

"Done." - Moments prior, the screen had lit up, albeit still dark, now it had the NERV logotype in one corner and the words '03 FEED VIDEO ONLY' in the other. Job done, the duo could finally drag themselves out from underneath the oversized television.

"S-senpai!" - the blonde heard her colleague call out nervously - "I.. think I'm stuck!"

"Great." - the scientist replied sarcastically - "I told you we should have gone on that diet together, no?" - Even though this situation was something trivial and completely undangerous, she knew she had to keep Maya's spirits up. Panicking people could turn a mundane mishap into something really bad. That TV _was _really heavy. And expensive.

"It's not my fault, Akagi-senpai! I told you I'm losing weight already, please just pull me out!" - the stress in her voice was audibly replaced with embarrassment. Satisfied, Ritsuko grabbed hold of the brunette's ankles.

"Hang on! One, two, pull!" - with one last strain and a weird tearing sound, Maya came flying out from inside the mess of wires. But something about her was different. Her skirt, having been snagged by a cut wire, traded its usual position around her thighs for a rather unorthodox location - her face, revealing her frilly white underwear to the world.

"Ah, there is something around my face, senpai.." - oblivious to her own exposure, lieutenant Ibuki reached for the material obstructing her view. - "What is wrong, Akagi-san?" - puzzled at blonde's amused look she had seen when she freed her face and stood up, she glanced herself over and immediately realized the problem.

"UWAAAA~" She jumped back onto her knees, effectively exposing even more of herself as she bent down, and reached for what she now realized was her skirt. "I'm so sorry senpai!" - hastily pulling it back on around her legs, she was thankful that the tear the metal made was a tiny one. Maya contorted herself in a deep bow, trying to hide her crimson face in the gesture.

"Don't worry." - Maya lifted her gaze back up, in hopes that her display of indecency was forgiven. - "They're cute." - The two words that came next was the last thing the brunette heard. She fainted to the floor with a dull thud.

* * *

As the on-screen picture changed into a mix of blocky colours, the quality worthy of a pre-impact internet video, the employees on the bridge perked up. The Interim was something they were all eager to see. Even Asuka, who did her best to seem uninterested before, put her expensive cell back onto the table, and sat up straight, paying attention to the feed. What appeared before them was a blotchy view of a forest. The picture shook up and down, in rhythm with what must have been Mana's walking pace. The children seemed to be proceeding along a well-trodden path in between dense leafy growth. None of the children could be seen, so it could be safe to assume they were walking side-to-side.

* * *

The three pilots walked gingerly to where they were told their mission objective was. Assuming a one-to-one terrain correlation, the fact of which was ascertained by NERV scientist with 98% certainty, the angel must be on the very top of this hill. Neither of the trio had said anything for a while now since they left the tree where they awoke. As she struggled to keep up with the pace of her fellow pilots, Mana tried her best to sneak in a few glances at Rei and Shinji without them noticing. The brunette knew they were both experienced pros, with hundreds of hours logged both in the Interim and in test environments. They looked the part too, on the faces of both were looks of concentration, without any kind of anxiety or fear. They knew what they came here to do and they would not hesitate when the time to do it arrived.

Rei looked regal and distant in her winter-coloured attire. Even her azure hair and pale skin matched the pattern of blues. With her perfect upright posture and elegant, careful walk, she looked like some kind of ice queen.

Shinji, on the other hand, looked like one of her valiant knights. The third child's Interim body was encased in white armour from neck to toe, a matching eye-blinding white shield hung from his back. The only exception to the rule was his weapon attached to his hip, a giant sword with a dark hilt and a silver blade. But even there, bright white lights pulsed along the steel edges, forming intricate patterns of white and disappearing as suddenly as they appeared, only to repeat the pattern a few seconds later. With her mind occupied on her comrades' looks, Mana jumped a bit when she heard the boy call her name.

" Kirishima-san?" - Shinji, who knew next to nothing about their new pilot colleague, decided to strike up a conversation. While his own and Rei's, and even Asuka's bodies looked like they were modelled with a medieval style in mind, Mana's one had a completely contrasting fashion. Immediately, what came to Shinji's mind, was some kind of robot, the brunette's colourful armour on her limbs and torso reminded him of mecha anime he used to watch when he was just a bit younger. The only things missing were two giant twin engines on her back, and then she would look ready to take to the stars, and bring the battle to the disgusting aliens' own home world.

"Y-yes?" - Hoping they did not see her covert glances, Mana looked at her feet, praying that this was not a dressing-down about her stalking them through their files earlier.

"Is your Interim body a ranged-type like Rei's?" - Mana was not expecting him to take even the slightest interest about her, so the question left her at a loss for words.

"Umm.. Yes!" - Surprised at the loudness of her own voice, she immediately toned it down for her next line - "My left arm shoots, but if you need me to, I could fight in close-quarters as well, my chest armour should be enough to.." - as she kept talking, her voice got quieter and quieter, until eventually, it trailed off so much that Shinji could not hear her at all. 'No, I can't brag or anything! I better stop talking this instant...' - Deciding that he would not get much else out of the timid girl, Shinji decided to end that branch of the conversation.

"It looks cool." - As soon as the brunette heard the compliment from the boy's mouth, Her face lifted up instantly, her hesitation to talk long-forgotten.

"Really? You really think so, Shinji-kun?" - A smile as radiant as the designs on Shinji's sword lit up her slightly flushed face. It was now Shinji's turn to feel awkward and embarrassed.

"Yes.. It's very.. colourful, Kirishima-san." - He thought he had to follow up on his previous comment, but nothing else came to mind.

"Ah, I am so glad that you like it!" - Suddenly, she was the opposite of what Shinji made her out to be - "And please, just call me Mana, okay?" - The unexpected forwardness of the strange girl had turned the tables on the third child. It was now his turn to lower his gaze and blush like an embarrassed kid.

Then, out of nowhere, someone grabbed his right arm and folded theirs into his, much like a couple on a date would. Shinji was suddenly scared. The girl was _too_ forward. He looked up to his right, gathering up his own will to tell her that this was too sudden but what he saw made him forget the speech he had prepared completely. On his right, blocking Mana out of Shinji's view, and leaning against his arm, entwined with her own, was Rei, who had apparently left her walking position on Shinji's left side, and quietly slid in between him and Mana, gently pushing her away. Her expression was as steely as always, but a hint of pink on the cheeks, which Shinji was too mentally exhausted by the new development to notice, betrayed her true emotions.

"I have calculated that if the angel were to attack us first, its vector of approach would be from our left side. Therefore, it is most advantageous for us to have Ikari-kun on the far left of the group."

* * *

Back at the HQ, Asuka was staring at the screen with a stern expression etched onto her face. Looking at what Mana's vision telemetry was relaying to the real world, she tried to make her own sense of it. Misato, who, along with the Commander, had the only sound link, which was configured to interact with and only with the Commander and the Director of Operations, never shared any information with anybody, leaving Asuka guessing about their speech.

'She is staring at Shinji and Rei. Why is she doing that so obviously? Oh look, the idiot noticed. What did he say? Ugh, why didn't I learn to lip-read... Now she turned her head back down. Ha, "_Don't talk to me, baka-Shinji!"_ - that's what she told him, yeah. Hm, now she turned back to face him.. Looks like he's trying to say something but can't.. Why is he blushing? "_Why are you so stupid, baka-Shinji?" - "I-I don't know, military bitch-san! I am completely retarded! I had Asuka wrapped around my finger and I had the insolence to turn her down! I am so stupid!" _Stupid! Stupid!' - she started banging her clenched fist on the control panel, earning her weird sideway glances from the technicians.

Back on the screen, Rei thrust into the picture out of nowhere, nearly making the camera - or Mana, in this case - topple over.

'What's Wondergirl doing now? Is she holding him by the.. Are they _flirting_?! At a time like this?!'

The last few words must have been said aloud by the riled-up redhead, because right after she finished, she could feel playful fingers tickling her sides.

"Ooh, sounds like somebody is je-ealo-ous~" - Misato's unmistakable voice and manner of teasing would have probably made Asuka explode with anger, if she was not already laughing so hard from Misato's skilled hands, which had gotten loads of practice with tickling Shinji over the years.

"Ha Ha! Misato-o! Ha Ha! What are you doing sto-o-ha-ha-p!" - When she eventually did, Asuka tried hard to regain the stern look she had earlier, but all she managed was a half-laughing grimace - she was still suffering from the after-effects of Misato's assault. - "Nobody is jealous of anything Misato! Just go tell them to hurry up and get it over with, I have no desire to be bothered with synching and piloting today, you hear?"

"All right, all right, in that case, I will tell Rei and Mana that they have competition!" - Misato winked. Asuka could not believe that was their Head of Operations . Did anybody here ever take their job seriously?

* * *

"The angel still has not moved. When you get to the summit, be prepared to engage at once." - Misato's voice sounded in the minds of all three pilots at once, relaying through the programs. The first and third children were already used to the harsh sensation, but this was a first for Mana, who whimpered when she felt it. - "Its signature is static, and by far weaker than the angel you defeated on the rooftops. You should have no problems with this one, just be careful about possible ambushes, the forest can give it plenty of places to conceal itself."

"I told you so." The albino, who still had not let go of Shinji's arm, looked around triumphantly.

Nobody replied. What greeted them atop the mountain was more interesting. At the very summit was a clearing, one that looked like it had been man-made, or, in this case, angel-made. The ground was absolutely flat, and yellow roots of different sizes stuck out, giving off an impression that someone had just run a giant knife across the top, leaving the surrounding trees alone, but separating the whole of the hilltop. In the middle of the large flat surface of about a hundred meters across, a single stone pillar stuck out. A pillar that looked extremely smooth and even, but the unmistakable grey texture pointed to the fact it had been made of rock. Large purple Latin letters went from the top to the bottom, forming one word - "_Intentator"_. At the very top, sat a woman.

Her dress - if you could call her dressed - was _very_ revealing, thin strips of blue material, or, at most, a bra, covered up her most private bits, while most of her skin was left exposed to the elements. Around her legs, three thick leather belts held a half-skirt, that went around only her right thigh, in place. Her most decent element of clothing was a body-length cape that was purple on the outside and red on the inside, topping off in a high collar, which blocked her head completely from somebody looking at her from behind. On the woman's head was something akin to a crown, a three-pronged gold plate, starting off as a single piece on her forehead, and splitting off into two more branches further up. It looked like it was held in place by nothing more than a red jewel wedged inside the plate, right on her forehead. Her face, framed by long, purple hair, was contorted in a satisfied smirk. As her deep blue eyes, framed by dark eyeliner playfully scanned the three children, she started to speak.

"None of you the _red one._" - Her sultry voice sounded double in the pilots' heads - once on the inside, like Misato's did, and one on the outside, like a normal voice would. Adding to the fact that they were already on a high enough hill, the effects from her voice compounded with the height into a severe vertigo for Shinji. "I have no quarrel with you. Bring me the red one and I will leave you unharmed."

"Blood pattern blue, terminate command confirmed!" - Another voice tore through the teenagers' heads, and probably not only theirs, as the strange woman said something in direct answer to the Major.

"Fufu~. How amusing, so the lilim did find a way to break through the barriers after all." - Shinji had no idea what the woman was talking about, all he knew was that this was his enemy and they were supposed to terminate the enemy. "Lilith's gift certainly was most useful. So please, don't let it go to waste. Use it - I have asked you to bring me the red one."

"Do you mean pilot Soryu?"- The woman did not seem threatening at the moment, so Rei thought it harmless to engage in conversation.

"How must I know, you lilim all look the same to me. Isn't "red one" enough of a description for you, _blue one_?" - She looked back at the children like she was teaching 1+1=2 to a bunch of particularly slow children.

"Why, what do you want with her?" - Something about her unsettled Shinji. This was an angel, and the fact that it was so much more human-like than the others was disturbing. The first two angels him and Rei fought were not of human shape at all. They did not even get to see Ramiil up close, but automatically assumed he was also some kind of beast, based on their first two encounters. Were all angels like this? Were they all _almost human? _ Had Shinji _killed_ them?

This was enough to make the woman finally uncross her legs, which were covered at their ends with long leather boots with heels, and stand up on the grey pillar, straightening her back proudly.

"I am Ishrafiil, the Temptress!" - Her previously calm and seducing voice now thundered through the surroundings threateningly - "I have come to exact revenge upon the killer of my beloved brother, Gaghiil! I shall take the red one into captivity and take her into captivity and bring her back to _Mater_, where she will face justice for her crimes against him!

"I have also killed others like you." - Rei tensed up, sensing that the woman - no, the angel - had stood up in preparation to engage them - "Do you also not want to take myself with?"

"I have no quarrel with you, blue one." - She gave the teenager a look of contempt. "Your dealings with other families do not interest me, I work for mine and mine alone. " - With that, she jumped of the three-meter high column and landed gracefully on her feet, spreading her arms like a bird would wings. "So, will I get what I wish for, or not?" - She stuck out one of her gloved hands with the last word, and a purple staff with a crescent at the end shot out from underneath the wet ground, right into her hand. She gripped the weapon firmly, and a purple light, much like the one in the First Child's staff lit up menacingly inside the crescent tip. She pointed it at the trio in a threatening gesture. - "I shall not wait any longer."

The children looked at each other, nodding in understanding. Rei signalled to the newcomer in their team to stay back.

"Kirishima-san. Me and Ikari-kun have worked together a long time, and we have several strategies. It would be wise for you to remain back. Use your ranged weapon if you have a chance, but do not hinder Ikari-kun in the front." - Mana gritted her teeth at the unexpected bossiness of the blue-haired girl, who, at first sight, appeared reserved and shy. But she did understand that if what Rei said was really the truth, it would be best to do as she says. Taking up a position to the right, she powered up her cannon and pointed it at the angel, which she could see thanks to the nature of the Interim itself, achieving a lock-on. Mana knew it would be useless against an AT-field, and not being a natural Seer, she had no AT-field of her own, so she would have to wait until Shinji broke through it himself.

Rei pointed her own weapon at Shinji, at which point the blue orb in between the prongs of her blue sceptre glowed bright and enveloped the boy in a soft warm glow. She had artificially covered him in her own AT-field from the staff, which "hardened" into dark blue hexagonal shapes that arranged in a 3-D oval around Shinji, who then charged at their target.

But even an action as threatening as that produced no reaction from the woman slash angel. Instead, she allowed her arrogant smile from earlier to creep back onto her lips. Shinji noticed this at once but paid no heed. He would destroy her, and make his father, Misato, and the rest, proud! Rei was a particularly gifted Seer, so her AT-field was strong. Counting on that, he focused his own in his sword, which he gripped tightly in his drawn-back right arm, ready to strike. In just two seconds, he would reach the target, his AT-field would neutralize the angel's own, while the first child's field would protect him from any counter-attack. The plan was perfect.

Was. The brightly-shining sword that now had a white hexagonal energy field perpendicular to its blade, reached the woman's ample chest and tore into it.

'No AT-field?' - was the only thought Shinji had time for. The woman, whose chest was now impaled on his weapon, grinned even wider. Before Shinji could voice his surprise, she disappeared. Her body literally exploded into thick purple smoke, that burned Shinji's eyes and parched his throat, making him gasp for breath. Immediately, the smoke dissipated, revealing none other than Ishrafiil herself, who was now several meters further.

"Don't worry, you did not _really_ hurt me, that was just a decoy. An Interim body of an Interim body. Cool, huh?" - her tone could even be considered friendly, if not for the fact that she held up her own staff right up to Shinji's face, its purple orb had been pulsing for a while already.

The staff's owner put on a mischievous smile, unleashing a wide blast of purple light at the trio.

"Boom~"

* * *

Now sitting upright in her comfortable seat at the control panel, the redhead tensed up as soon as she saw the angel sitting on top of the giant stone pillar. She may have looked like a beautiful woman, but Asuka's Seer instincts screamed 'danger'. It was hard to see with the quality of the feed, but the woman's mouth opened and closed as if in conversation.

'Mein Gott im Himmel, are they _talking_ with it? Are they _complete_ idiots?!'

The German girl stood up, her hands slammed flat on the control panel, and upper body leaning forward towards screen. The woman leapt down from her column and threateningly pointed her staff at the camera. For a millisecond, Asuka's own chest recoiled backwards, as if the weapon was pointing directly at her. Regaining her composure, she got even angrier.

'Attack, idiots! Why are you taking so long?!'

Finally, as if obeying her mental command, the camera moved off to the side and showed Shinji being enveloped in some kind of light, which the redhead decided must have been part of Rei's own AT-field. Shinji charged at the Angel.

'How reckless. If this doesn't work, I am knocking her a whole ten points down on my scale, even further below than the _idiot_.'

The sword pierced the angel right in the middle of its chest, but there was something wrong. The angel's body vanished into thin air, unveiling another body right behind it. Asuka let out a gasp, sensing the trouble the pilots were about the face. Even through the blocky video screen, she saw the woman's haughty smirk. Her purple staff pointed at Shinji, and purple light lit up the screen, making it painful to watch. Again, Asuka's instincts took over, sending a jolt through her body. When she realized her own body was in no immediate danger, the redhead noticed that her left arm darted to her neck and grabbed hold of a tiny silver axe, engraved with Norse runes, that hung around her chest. She only ever touched her good-luck charm in times of deep distress, meaning what her fellow pilots were facing would have even made her own nerves of steel buckle. The angel had smiled so arrogantly too. She turned away from the now completely purple screen and started running.

Misato couldn't see the angel on-screen. Her only clue as to what was happening was the sound link. But halfway through, she found another. The only other Seer in the whole building sat just a few meters away from herself, fidgeting nervously with her long light-red hair while looking at the screen. Misato had heard everything that angel said. About Asuka, about families and about the previous angel, who was apparently Ishrafiil's brother. Asuka herself had heard none of that, but saw everything perfectly. When the Head of Operations saw her former ward recoil in fear, she feared something did not go as intended. When she recoiled a second time, and grabbed her _necklace_, which she never showed to anybody, which even Misato had seen only by accident, the major _knew_ something had not gone as intended. When the screen blacked out, Misato turned back forward.

"Aoba, is the feed working as intended?"

"Yes ma'am, no problems on our end, must be something wrong in the Interim" - Shigeru Aoba, the long-haired technician shouted at her from below.

'Damn.' - Misato gripped her own good-luck charm hanging around her neck - a thick silver cross. She turned back to where the German pilot had been sitting a few moments back - but to add to Head of Operations' worries, she had disappeared. Knowing Asuka, it was exactly like her to do something rash and naive in the situation. Like walk right into an apparent trap by Ishrafiil, if she understood what the angel said correctly. Frantically, Misato scanned the lower decks for her pilot, finding the girl decked out in the red plug suit jumping down from level to level, apparently going for the hangar floor - where her own inactive AVE capsule stood.

"Asuka! Don't!" - Was all Misato could scream at her former roommate. Asuka did not slow her pace, only stopping when she landed next to her metal capsule. Her expert fingers found the right buttons on the keypad quickly, sending power to the device, and lighting up several LEDs on and around it, indicating a start-up sequence.

"Misato," - the girl started speaking at her from below, tilting her head up to look at her ex-guardian, now her senpai. - "I know we have not seen eye to eye recently, but, please, you can't stop me. Not _now._ You have seen it yourself, or, _heard_, whatever. Either way, I don't care, right now an angel is about to kill pilots, _your pilots_. I can't leave them there, it's just ... not me.' - Asuka kicked open the top of the capsule, and made a sudden move with her hands towards her mouth. Misato instantly remembered what it was - NERV Germany issued her with fast-acting sleeping pills in case of need for an emergency activation where the pilot would not be confident of their own ability to get in synch with the Scorcher. The purple-haired major always thought that she threw those out, along with her neural clips and everything AVE-related. So, after all, she _was_ still really serious about this.

Misato looked up at the screen, which was still dark. Her own vocal link was not working either, she heard nothing but silence from the Interim, and had no way of knowing if her own voice was getting through the children on the other side.

"Asuka.." - her tone was now more nervous than angry, like before - "Are you sure you want to do this?" - she realized telling Asuka what the angel said about her would rile her up even more.

The redhead jumped into her unit-02 and activated the LCL purge. She had forty seconds to sort everything out before she lost consciousness but she did not worry. Back in Germany she initiated start-up in twenty-five seconds flat. Planting the sensor pads directly on her head since she had no neural clips, Asuka opened the comms channel to Misato. Her scalp was burning - synchronization without the clips was more painful and troublesome. But now was not the time to let her heart falter.

"Never been more sure of anything in my life."

Remembering the angel's smile, her bright-red lips curled into one of her own.

'She who laughs last - laughs best. _Baka-angel._'


	5. Chapter 5 - Angel's Flight

CHAPTER 4

Angel's Flight

Shinji Ikari slowly opened his brown eyes, unveiling a pure indigo-coloured plain above him. In the upper right corner was a bright white light, which the teenager figured must have been the sun. The ground he was on let off a generic smell of earth and vegetation. The absence of any bird noises and the extreme still in the air reminded him he was still in the Interim, where no birds existed, and where not once had he ever felt the gentle caress of the wind on his skin.

A dull, flowing pain in his chest helped him recall what exactly he was doing in the Interim. Rolling over onto his stomach with a grunt, the AVE pilot fixed the palm of his one hand on the wet, flat, black ground, while his other reached for the hilt of his weapon - a weightless, or for him, at least, oversized double-edged two-hander. As soon as his hand touched the dark leather wrapping of the hilt, the blade, like an obedient pet, recognized the teenager as its master - the intricate patterns on the silver edges lit up, and started pulsing in a manner one could almost call happy.

The boy straightened his back and was immediately reminded of his precarious situation. A short distance away, two teenage girls lay on the dark ground. Their limbs plastered around, they looked to be unconscious.

'Rei.. Mana..'

The former's beautiful blue dress was now smeared with dark stains, presumably from the wet earth underneath her. The brunette girl's right, unmecha-ed, arm hung limply on the waist of the blue-haired Rei, which reminded Shinji of the way a child would cling to the mother for protection. For protection from something scary, which now approached them with deliberation of a slow, steady walk.

The beautiful woman, clad in revealing purple strips of light material swung her hips the way a model would on a runway, her eyes gleaming at the sight of the helpless girls.

"Pity." - Ishrafiil, the seventh angel, uttered, coming to a stop next to the unconscious girls, and kneeling down, before turning to the armour-clad boy. - "_This one's_ AT-field was particularly strong. You owe your ability to think right now solely to her power." - She said, stroking Ayanami's messed blue bangs underneath her golden headgear.

It took Shinji a few moments to recall just what exactly happened before. The angel used a cheap, cowardly trick to incapacitate them. All he remembered was a bright purple flash. Rei had sacrificed her own AT-field by covering the third child with it, so she was fully susceptible to whatever effects the ray had. As for Mana - Shinji was unaware of her abilities, but the fact that she was lying down helplessly next to the albino hinted that Mana's field was either too weak or non-existent. While the former could be easily explained - after all, she did not have much real combat practice, she might just have frozen in place, or not concentrated enough to spread it - why would they send somebody who was not a Seer into the Interim? As far as the boy knew, Seers like himself were indeed a dying breed - most of them too mentally unstable to keep a family or children; and boy, wasn't that the truth, with himself, Asuka and Rei as prime examples. But after all, there were still several hundred left in Japan, why would the military make such an unwise move of sending a normal person in a Seer's place?

"Oh well." - The purple-haired angel's voice brought Shinji out of his trance - "I might not have captured that red troublemaker, and _you_ seem to be unaffected by my pretty little fireworks display, but at least I can take these two with me. They would make fine slaves, methinks."

Shinji felt frustration building up inside him. Just minutes prior, this abomination just knocked the three of them out with just one wave of her sceptre. Even with Ayanami's AT-field protecting him, he still got knocked out, the feeling in his chest reminded him every heartbeat, when it would throb uncomfortably. Why couldn't she just leave them alone!

_I shall come along. If it is with Ikari-kun, then it would be agreeable._

Remembering the third child's soft, even voice, anger began to build up in addition to frustration. One of the girls lying there trusted him enough to go out with him! And he was just going to do nothing? Who did this woman think she was, taking his happiness from him on her own whim! His knuckles gripped the black hilt of the sword so hard they went pale. He will not run away _this_ time!

While the woman was still kneeling and had her back turned, observing the two incapacitated girls, The brown-haired pilot took his chance. Without making a sound, he charged at the woman, shield and sword gripped tight. She would not notice him approach, and, after one swift strike, her head would roll down to the ground, seeping it in whatever colour angel blood was. In theory.

But reality had different plans. Just as Shinji was about to deliver the blow, the woman turned around, her purple hair making a wide arc as her head swung. Instead of the haughty demeanour she had before, her face was now distorted by a terrifying scowl that scrunched her beautiful features up, eyes narrowing to tiny slits and lips parted, displaying a set of brilliantly white teeth with unnaturally long incisors.

"So, I shall have my fight after all!" - her voice, now a mixture of a hiss and a powerful roar, doubled up through his head like it did when she first spoke to him. The angel swung out her left arm in an arc that met Shinji's sword, and stopped centimetres away, eliciting a shrill ringing sound that was all too familiar to him by now. A transparent yellow hexagon hovered just in front of her slender hand, blocking the blade's path. Shinji did not have much time to react, when in an instant, the purple-haired woman brought her other hand to meet her left, he felt her AT-field pushing back at his sword. The impact was so powerful, he felt his own arms spin out of control, and crashed to the ground, letting go of the hilt. With a dull clang, his trusty blade landed next to him. lifeless and dull.

Her focus now solely on Shinji, Ishrafiil jumped to her feet gracefully, the usual demeanour of "I'm better than you" was back on her face. For a second, it reminded Shinji of Asuka.

"You are lucky my most powerful spell takes some time to recharge, white one. You would be lying down next to your girlfriends, just as unconscious as they are." - In a familiar fashion, she pointed her glowing staff at Shinji's face. Reacting in the nick of time, instinctively the boy clutched his left arm to his upper body, protecting himself with the shield still strapped onto his limb. The force of the blast was so powerful, he almost came to regret the decision. His shield got knocked back with such force that his chest started hurting again, and his arm rammed into his head powerfully enough that he felt the warm trickle, of what he assumed was blood, on his upper lip. The good news was, it did not look like the blast penetrated his shield.

"So what they said _was_ true. You surely _are_ the strongest, white one. I don't think even _hers_ would have withstood one of those blasts." - slowly moving his shield off his face, Shinji saw the angel pointing to the girls several feet away, she must have been referring to Rei.

But even so, she basically was head and shoulders above him when it came to AT-fields and their power. The boy was starting to hate this.

'Is this what she came here to do? To show that she was _better_? Just get it over with and kill me!'

Once again smiling, she pointed her staff out of his face and into the ground.

"I have proven that you lost, no? Be reasonable and stay down while I take my spoils of war." - Once again, the woman turned towards Rei and Mana. - "If you are going to become a successful lilim warrior, you better learn to give up when you have lost. Your lives are not as expendable in the Interim as ours." - Turning her head back to face the teenager, she finished off. - " Shinji." - He did not even hear her say the last word. He just saw her mouth it. And his mind mentally mouthed it with her. 'Shinji.' How in the hell did she know his name? She had just been calling them by colours!

"Spoils of.. what are you talking about?!" - finally, he was filled with rage. Jumping to his feet yet again, blood from his nose squirting down onto his white chest plate, drawing a macabre pattern on it. With a throaty scream, he charged again.

"Give up already!" - The third child probably did not notice, but frustration of her own was also building up inside Ishrafiil, and it was trickling out into her voice. "Haven't you had enough!" - Once again she swung her arm out to meet his sword in half-flight, spreading out her field. But this time, no impact came. The sword stopped in half-flight. This time, Shinji stopped it himself. Instead of the blade, the white shield finished off the arc for it. Now, in place of a rough impact, a gentle melding of two AT-fields - one yellow, the other white - sucked in Ishrafiil's arm and Shinji's shield, and brought them right next to each other, fixed in place.

Ishrafiil's purple eyes grew wide from surprise. She had heard that the boy's abilities far outmatched any other lilim's, but at the same time she heard that he was an indecisive, cowardly brat, nearly useless on the field of battle. Getting caught off-guard so easily, thanks to her own misconceptions, was not something Father would take lightly. Trying to pry her left arm off of the shield to no avail, she tried getting off a shot from her crystal inside her weapon right into his stomach, but it seems like he made a plan for that as well. Pulling his shield back, he struck out with his leg against her leading foot, making her tumble off-balance and fall flat on her back, Shinji sitting right on top of her own exposed stomach. With the staff dropped at impact and her field neutralized, she was completely defenceless. Ishrafiil's heart started beating faster. In a way - this excited her. No other lilim had ever managed to beat her, or even close to beating her.

But she still had one ace up her sleeve. In her case, probably stuffed inside her bra. She was born in female form, and in a very appealing one at that. For the sexless angels, who could reproduce with any of their own, this meant nothing, but for male lilim it was completely different. Even back in _Mater_, countless lilim servants would lose what scraps of sanity they had when they were brought through the barriers over her. And for someone who had spent countless days in the _Filia_, what the angels called the lilim world, seducing all kinds of hapless men and turning them into her servants, the next steps were all too easy.

Pinning down the angel with his knees, and flinging his left arm, with his shield still attached, further left, Shinji effectively denied the angel any method of fighting back. Her staff lay several meters away, where it landed after she could not hold on to it falling down, her arm making a wide arc, and releasing the weapon half-way, with the momentum doing the rest. Without it and her AT-field she had nothing else. She _should _ have nothing else.

Ishrafiil slowly blinked. Her out-of-focus eyes looked into Shinji's own brown ones. Slowly, her free left arm bent at the elbow, and lifted up. Expecting some kind of trick, followed by pain, he shut his eyes, expecting a sharp sensation. What followed, however, were several softer ones. Ishrafiil brought her hand up against Shinji's cheek, and her slender fingers slowly traced over his skin.

"Go on." - her whisper was so soft, even Shinji could barely hear her. "Go on, kill me. Kill an innocent woman who had done nothing wrong except defending her pride."

'Do it! It's an angel, our task is to terminate it!' - Shinji tried to reason with the part of his own body that was disobeying him. - 'She - No, _it_! It was going to take away Rei and Mana, and Asuka too! Kill her now!'

He brought his sword up to where her ribcage met her taut stomach, and Shinji felt her chest moving up and down in sync with her breathing. The sharp point of his two-hander penetrated the skin by a millimetre as he held it there, making a tiny button of red blood pop out. Goosebumps covered Ishrafiil's exposed flesh from the touch of cold steel.

Shinji's will now, too, began to falter. Something like this can't be an angel! A living person, whose warmth and breathing he could feel underneath, who possessed emotions like any human being did, who was scared of death like any human was, could not be an angel like the monsters he fought before. Someone like that was as good as a human, and he could not kill other humans.

He urged his arm forward, begged it to thrust the blade deeper into her. Ishrafiil breathed in sharply, in anticipation of pain, eyes shut and lips parted. Her fingers were still caressing his cheek when his face dropped downwards. Ishrafiil's face flinched when she felt the soft sensation of warm drops on her skin. She opened her eyes, and realized the drops were tears. Tears were streaming down the boy's cheek onto her own.

"Can't do it, can you?" - Her voice returned to normal, but this time another emotion was mixed in among the malice, which had been its sole resident earlier.

"Of course that coward can't!" - A voice Ishrafiil had not heard up until then, ripped through the surrounding growth. "But I can!"

A flash of white tore through one of the trees and burned up the earth mere centimetres away from where she lay straddled by the crying third child. Taking advantage of Shinji's surprise, one of her legs, bent at the knee, nimbly slid under the boy's chest and, using the commotion as a distraction, pushed him back with force, separating the two AT-fields.

The boy dropped down lifelessly to the floor a short distance away, and perceiving him to be of no immediate threat, the woman rolled to the side and made a grab for the sceptre. Just in time, as the mystery assailant unleashed another round of white light, but this time she was ready. Using her AT-field as a shield, Ishrafiil deflected the beam into the trees and retaliated with a beam of her own into the area where the enemy was supposed to be standing.

Suddenly, the forest had gone silent. Smoke and dust obscured the purple-haired angel's view, and she lowered her weapon in hopes that the silence signified that her foe was struck down. Instead, a blur of red stormed through the shroud with a feral scream, closing in fast on the angel. In one swift movement, a teenage girl, clad in all-red, long reddish auburn hair blazing a trail behind her, ended up right in front of the angel, her war hammer already closing in on its target in a wide vertical arc. Shielding herself, Ishrafiil put her AT-field above her head to knock the hammer back, but instead, it was locked in place and still pressing down, the energy of the field insufficient to fling it away. With the angel's field now deployed, the girl saw her opportunity and pressed her left palm tightly to the angel's exposed midriff. In the back of her mind, Asuka realized there was probably almost no spare energy this far away from Tokyo-3, but nevertheless tried her hardest to draw as much in as she could. A subdued burning sensation started pulsing through the girl's left arm, and out of the corner of her eyes, the angel could see the light enveloping it.

"I see. So there _are_ finally worthy challengers among your kind." - This time, Ishrafiil knew it was over for sure. She only had one AT-field, and it could either keep the hammer from crushing her skull, or deflect the energy building up right next to her stomach, but not both. - "This will make the _real_ battle much more satisfying."

"Die!" - was all Asuka could growl out through her gritted teeth in response, and a ray of white ripped through Ishrafiil's body and the air behind her. Immediately, her body disappeared, leaving behind a small cloud of purple smoke.

"The blue pattern has gone silent, Asuka." - The redhead could hear Misato's voice in addition to her own ragged breathing, signifying that whatever was blocking the communication was now gone too. Her breathing still heavy after the fight, she picked up her own steel weapon lying on the ground and headed towards the forms of the other pilots spread on the floor. As soon as she could ascertain that they were fine, Asuka would then signal Misato to begin the recall procedure.

The closest was Shinji, lying on his back a few steps away. From where she was, Asuka could see his brown eyes open and looking up above, a clear liquid streaming out of the corners.

'Is he... _crying_?!'

"Get up, baka!" - she lightly poked him in his side with the point of her metal-plated platform shoe. Producing no reaction, she headed over to the other two. "What's wrong with them, baka-Shinji?" - For a split second, fear tore through her mind.

'Are they...?'

She quickly kneeled down and felt the exposed necks of Rei and Mana. First finding the former's pulse, and then the latter's, she got up, her fears put to rest.

'No, they are just unconscious. They even look ... kind of peaceful.'

Fear was replaced by rage. Clenching her white-gloved fists, she stomped back over to where the third child lay. This time, she put much more force into her kick, lifting Shinji's left side centimetres into the air for a second.

"Get up, you _fucking_ idiot!" - She could not control herself anymore, all she felt was anger. - "Your precious little girlfriend is lying down helpless, and all you can do is lie down and _cry_?! You had the perfect opportunity to end it, why didn't you?" - She grabbed one of his arms at the wrist and pulled her hardest, yanking the boy to his feet. "I had to break my goddamn promise, a promise I made to myself and _Mama_, to come and save _you_, and _her,_ and _her._" - Asuka's arm pointed in the direction of the unconscious girls, while her other was now holding Shinji by the cuff of his armour. - "And instead of helping me, all you can offer are mindless tears!"

"I.. don't want.. to kill.." - Asuka could barely hear his voice, timid and breaking. The girl's free arm swung hard.

-SLAP-

"Disgusting."

* * *

Shinji opened his eyes to see the now-familiar ceiling of the medical ward at the HQ. White fluorescent lights mixed in among the white tiles of plywood gently shone on the boy draped in white sheets. His cheek still burned where Asuka slapped him...some time ago. He could not remember how long ago, and had no way of telling. Adjusting his head on the pillow so that the hurting part of his face was up in the air, Shinji turned to the side. He saw something in the room that was never there before.

In a corner of the room, a girl with blue hair, dressed in a blue skirt and a white blouse quietly sat on a wooden chair, paging through a rather large book called "Art of Assembly". He slowly recalled the events in the Interim, which were hazy like a dream. Well, in a sense, it _was_ a dream. He remembered Ayanami getting hit by the purple light, was she okay? Was Mana okay?

He propped himself up on the mattress with both hands, and lifted himself further up onto his pillow. Ayanami lifted her eyes off the book onto the bed where the boy previously slept. Noticing movement, her head jolted up, the book slammed closed and the quick tapping sound of feet hitting the tile floor accompanied her march to Shinji's bedside.

"A-Ayanami..." - Shinji was slightly ashamed of his half-dressed state underneath the covers, and only kept eye contact for a fraction of a second. - "Are you okay?"

The albino looked at him with surprise in her red eyes.

"I am fine, Ikari-kun" - Her eyes blinking once, she continued - "The Interim's effects do not transfer into the real world with much precision. You must remember that everything that happens there is an illusion."

* * *

_Several NERV personnel surrounded the four capsules where the four pilots who engaged the target lay. One by one, the metal lids were lifted open, and the LCL drained. The teenagers, still unconscious, were being loaded up onto portable hospital beds to be transferred to the HQ's hospital wing. _

_So far, everything had gone without a hitch, the preliminary examinations and post-recall scans had detected nothing wrong, either physically or mentally. The ordinarity of the convoy, consisting of the four teenagers being wheeled in a hallway by nurses, was broken by Mana, who let out a sudden gasp and sat up on her bed, back straight as an arrow._

_"Shinji! Shinji?" - Her head started turning around, presumably looking for the third child, if her calling out of his name was any clue.- "Shinji!" - Spying the brown mop of hair two beds behind her, she swung her sheets open and jumped to her feet, as if the hours spent in the Interim took no toll on her at all. Jumping over the head of a young, blonde nurse, who shielded her head with her arms and knelt down with a squeak as the brunette, still in her plug suit, narrowly missed her head, she landed on the bed next to her, the bed of one Rei Ayanami. The harsh landing, which happened to consist of Mana's foot ending up squarely in the middle of her stomach, woke the albino right out of her post-recall dream state._

_"Oof!" - Rei got the wind knocked out of her as Mana jumped over yet another nurse onto the last bed, which was Shinji's. Sitting up like Mana did seconds before, she scanned the surrounding area for the culprit that so rudely awoke her, the sight on the bed behind hers left her unable to respond._

_Tightly gripping Shinji's unconscious body, Mana was clinging to the third child, who was still inside the white bed sheets, both her arms and legs were wrapped around him, head on his chest with the most content of expressions._

_"Shinji, I love you!" - the brunette screamed as the nurses tried to drag her off the sleeping teenager in vain. Their actions only caused her to tighten her grip._

_Rei could not comprehend what brought about the sudden onset of such forward behaviour in the quiet brunette, but as soon as her eyes stopped on the sleeping Shinji, she found her thinking ability had ground to a halt._

_'Must... hug... Ikari-kun!'_

_Another nurse had to scatter out of the way as the girl in the white plug suit stood up on her bed and dove onto the first bed, arms spread out wide._

* * *

_Ritsuko closed her the yellow paper folder she was holding with an audible clap as the pages hit against each other._

_"We assume those were the effects of the energy beam that was described in AVE unit-01's memory banks. I have told the nurses to administer a light anaesthetic to all four just to be sure, the effects should wear off in a couple of hours." - Ritsuko finished off with a smirk, barely containing her laughter in front of Misato's desk in her office, where the major sat with a troubled expression._

_"Just keep an eye on Asuka, if anything like that happens to her, she might seriously hurt someone if she finds out something like that happened to her." - Connecting her palm to her face with an audible slap, purple hair covering it as she put her head down, Misato thought about how this was going to look on her report to the commander and sub-commander. Ridiculous, that's how._

_"Don't worry, I believe they will remember nothing after the effect has worn off, and as far as we know, Asuka and Shinji were not even hit at all, so there is nothing to worry about, Misato." - The blonde doctor headed towards the door and let out a playful giggle. "Have fun with the paperwork!"_

_"Ugh."_

* * *

Unaware of what transpired a few hours prior, Ayanami kneeled at the side of Shinji's bed. For reasons unknown, she suddenly found herself unable to hold eye contact of her own, which she learned was a staple of one-to-one conversations. Staring at the setting afternoon sun peeking through the wide windows instead, she continued.

"If you are feeling up to it, there is still time to obtain the frozen dairy product you offered yesterday, Ikari-kun."

* * *

Asuka swiped her NERV ID card at the exit and the red and white boom gates opened in front of her black Honda NC35 bike. Her emotions were dulled by the recall, and, like in a dream, she could not remember what she felt completely, but she knew she wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. So, when she woke up in the hospital bed, Asuka immediately snuck out into the changing rooms, put on the yellow knee-length dress that she arrived in, and her red sports jacket over it, and marched out into the garages.

Driving the bike she spent most of her savings from the modest NERV salary last year always seemed to calm her. Like most days, the highways were nearly empty, in contrast to what she had heard about pre-impact Japan from Misato. Feeling the harsh wind against her body and in her hair that did not fit inside the black helmet helped clear her mind of negative emotions. She could recall the mission almost completely now, and what was clear to herself was that she would continue piloting. The German girl swore not to do it ever again, but in light of what she saw today, it almost seemed... selfish. She could find no better word for leaving the fate of the planet to a wimpy cry-baby of a man.

Slamming the front door of her apartment closed, the redhead dashed into her room, and put her chair in front of the closet doors. In her eagerness, she forgot to open the doors before placing the chair, so she had to redo the procedure, this time opening the white wooden doors, which she generously cursed in her mother tongue, first. Standing on her toes on the precariously flimsy plastic chair, Asuka ran her hands on the top shelf, feeling for a familiar object. After nearly falling down twice, she finally managed to grab the metal headpiece. Jumping down onto the floor, Asuka ran her hands through her hair, and fixed the neural clips in place. Even though she left them on the floor of her former room in Misato's apartment when leaving during the tantrum, she found them lying on the "welcome" mat by her door when, she presumed, Shinji or Misato found out the location of her new home. Leaving it by the door did seem more like Shinji's style than Misato's, so she was grateful that the idiot did something right, at least.

With only one red pyramid intact, the other one broken by her foot two years ago, Asuka clipped the right side of her hair backwards, while leaving the left one as it was. Running to the body-length mirror in the bathroom, the redhead shifted her head into all sorts of positions to get a good look at the hairstyle.

Deciding it looked passably cute, even though a bit on the unusual side for her, she took it off, and followed it with her clothes and underwear. She opened the shower door and slid her slender frame inside, eager to wash off the vile stench of LCL.

The hot water felt especially pleasant on her tired skin, her thoughts making it even more pleasant. From now on, Asuka Langley Soryu was back! She would save this world from the angels whether it wanted it or not.

* * *

In the dark of his office, commander Ikari looked over the transcripts from today's mission, as captured by AVE unit-01 and AVE unit-02, with the other two units' logs almost non-existent due to their pilots' early incapacitation.

"I don't want to kill." - He read aloud partly to himself, partly to his aide and second-in-command, sub-commander Fuyutsuki, who was pacing slowly on the mirror-like floor in front of the commander's heavy wooden desk. - "It seems like the third child is back to his old ways" - The older Ikari noted, reluctant to use his son's name. "Unit-02's log states that he had a perfect shot at the angel but hesitated to take it, instead breaking into tears. That makes two pilots that have proven unreliable in the last week, Fuyutsuki." - He looked up at the gray older man, who was now concentrating intently.

"But Ikari, the second child recognized the error she had made and volunteered to go in herself, didn't you see that yourself?"

"Yes, but even so." - Commander Ikari folded his gloved hands in his signature gesture. - "There is no way to know for sure if Shinji would prove to have the same determination." - Fuyutsuki raised his eyebrow at the commander's sudden mention of his offspring's name. - "Put Rei back on the medication. We cannot afford to have our most reliable pilot meet the same fate. And contact NERV England, ask them how their own program is coming along. I have heard good things about their pilot, especially her obedience. Another back-up will prove useful."

The usually imperturbable commander stood up and walked up to the window that ran the length of his office's back wall. Fuyutsuki could clearly hear a hint of frustration in his voice.

"And call everyone else too! We will need all the damn resources we can get."

* * *

The clacking sound of heels hitting the marble floor resonated through the dark torch-lit hallway. Next to the large red door at the end of it, one of the guards clad in dark metal armour was alerted to the noise straight away, and elbowed his nearby friend and colleague, who he presumed to be sleeping, right away. The two guards gave a salute to the approaching dark figure by straightening their backs and hitting the shafts of their spears against the floor, producing an audible sound.

'Pathetic idiots.' - Only a blind and deaf man would not notice the incompetence of the two guards, but right now she did not care. She bore important news. Paying no heed to the two buffoons, she proceeded to push at the red doors with arms outstretched, making an effective entrance into a large hall, which was lit only a tiny bit better than the corridor behind her. Walls of dark rock contrasted with the white marble floor of the extremely large room. Small windows, through which tiny rays of light seeped in, dotted the walls below the ceiling, but did not add to the light in the room at all. Guards placed generously along the walls paid no attention to the entrance, or at least it seemed that way because their faces were covered by helmets as dark as their armour.

Loud sounds of laughter and partying immediately assaulted her ears as she proceeded past the table where a debauchery of drink was ongoing. Paying no heed to several pairs of eyes staring hatefully at her, and saying nothing to anybody, she walked straight up to the golden throne at the far end of the table. Kneeling down in front of the large man sitting there, she lowered her head and kissed his right foot. Sometimes she really hated this world and its ancient rituals. She always felt the lilim world could suit her better, but there was no place in it for someone like her.

Flipping her purple hair out of her face made way for her purple eyes to stare up at the man sitting in the seat of power.

"The test was a success." - She allowed herself a small smile. - "Father."


	6. Chapter 6 - Back in Reality

CHAPTER 6

Back in Reality

The stream of the "barely-on-time" students has finished flowing through the door of 2-A's classroom just before the first bell, which signified the start of homeroom, had rung. It was ended off by Touji Suzuhara, who, having looked at the clock hanging up on the front wall, contentedly pumped his large fist in the air. Satisfied at being on time, he closed the wooden door behind himself in response to the chiming of the bell, and proceeded to throw his behind down on his chair at the far end of the room. The jock, who was wearing his customary blue tracksuit, unpacked the contents of his bag onto the desk in front of him, waving a quick greeting to his friends. His seat was to the right of Kensuke Aida, and diagonally across from Shinji Ikari. His two best mates were in the middle of an intense discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of the new models of medium German tanks that were made available to play that past weekend in World of Panzer, an online game both boys played. Touji, who did not have time for foolish chasing of pixels around the screen, wasted no time in questioning Shinji about a rather interesting rumour that Hikari, the class rep, who also doubled up as the girl the whole school thought he was dating, had divulged to him while working on the science project due for that day.

"So, Shinji!" - he began slyly, walking up to his desk and slamming one of his palms onto it, interrupting the argument about armour sloping on hulls. - "A little birdie told me she saw ya gettin' frisky with a certain aloof girl at the mall."

Taking a while to register just where exactly the conversation had shifted to, Shinji's face reddened up a shade when Touji started elbowing him in the ribs with a suggestive expression. Noticing his friend's revealing reaction, Kensuke perked up as well.

"Ooh la la!" - He had forgotten all about German World War II armour in an instant. - "Recruited an extra crew member for your tank of life, eh?" - He continued, glancing around the now-full class, the students of which were yammering away happily in absence of the teacher, before turning to his tracksuit-clad friend. "Was it Tomoko-chan? I _knew _she liked you, Shin-man!"

"That's why you don't have a girlfriend yourself, Kensuke." - The short-haired boy replied, sighing demonstratively. - "What even makes you think she likes him?"

"Dude, that chick totally digs Shinji here!" - Kensuke relented, continuing to ship the third child with a pretty-looking girl with long dark hair, who was sitting in a desk on the opposite side of the class, blissfully unaware of the discussion happening on the other end. - "And I'm only single by choice!" - He quickly added, remembering the first part of the jock's statement.

The barely-on-timers having arrived in their entirety, the door would now open and close every minute or so as a "barely-late" student would occasionally peek in, ensure that the teacher was nowhere in sight, and quickly sneak to their seat inside. Every time the entrance opened, the conversations about how the students spent their respective weekends would lull, only to be re-ignited when everyone could see that the person opening the door was not, in fact, the teacher.

"Sure, sure. So that girl drenching you in orange juice that week was by choice as well?" - Touji remembered the incident from the cafeteria, which the bespectacled teen would, to be honest, much rather forget. Apparently Kensuke's overzealous attempts at a pick-up set off the first-year, although the boy himself was too ashamed to share details with anyone.

"Shu-.. shut up!" - How the hell did the discussion come to this? - "Anyway, she was just... trying to get a fly off my face! She is just terrified of bugs, so she overreacted..." - Keen to change the subject, he turned to Shinji. - "Well, if not Tomoko, who was it?"

Touji, cackling away like a madman, jumped up from his seat and in two leaps reached Ayanami's in front of Shinji, her seat still empty - the albino was running late today. Making himself comfortable, Touji lifted the back of his tracksuit top over his head, in a weak effort to imitate Rei's hair. Straightening his back, and making his voice as solemn as possible, he turned around.

"You were so good last night, Ikari-kun." - Barely moving his lips, he tried his best to sound like Ayanami. - "So good, I was unable to walk to school toda-mmmf!"

Reaching over to block the jock's mouth, Shinji hastily threw down Touji's jacket back down over his back, hastily taking a peek at the rest of the class, concerned about somebody listening in on the commotion. His fears proved to be groundless, as the majority in the class were happily chatting away, with some putting in a last-minute effort to copy homework. Nobody seemed to be paying attention.

"N-nothing of the sort happened!" - Shinji started waving his arms at his friend, chasing him back towards his own seat. - "How did you even found out we went out?"

"My sources." - He answered proudly, crossing his arms on his chest with a look of satisfaction.

Tell-a-girl was _still_ the fastest method of communication well into the twenty-first century, millennia after it was first introduced. Apparently, on the evening of Saturday's mission against the seventh angel, Asuka went out to go shopping for snacks for when Yuuna Miyazaki would come over to start the science project, and spied something unusual when passing by the food courts.

* * *

A brown-haired boy in plain clothing was walking arm-in-arm with a blue-haired girl in school uniform, but Asuka was walking behind them, unable to establish their identities by means of actually seeing their faces. Driven by an emotion, which the redhead insisted to her friend was merely curiosity and "_not_ jealousy, baka!", she started tailing the couple to make sure she knew who it was, but they showed no signs of slowing down as the pair of them walked out of the food court. The spacious hall, where smells of several kinds of both healthy and unhealthy foods wafted in the air, was connected to the movie theatres by means of a short passageway, with smaller clothing stores lined up on either side of it. Hiding underneath one of the mannequin's skirts, unnoticed by both the pilots standing next to the ticketing booth, and the hapless clerks inside, Asuka waited for a chance and then finally dashed out, grocery bags rustling in tow, as soon as she saw her targets disengage the booth and proceed towards the stairs leading to the screening halls.

Keeping her eyes on who, she presumed, were Shinji and Rei, Asuka pointed blindly at one of the posters, not caring in the least which film she would get a ticket for, and set off to find their hall as soon as she tore her slip of paper out of the saleswoman's hands. With the mall being almost empty, it was pretty easy to notice the pair sitting in the middle of the rows of red seats in one of the rooms. Quietly sneaking into the projector booth, she and set down the white bags of food she was holding, making sure she did not wake up the acne-faced teen peacefully snoring away on a chair in the corner. Peeking into the window through which the roll of film was being shown, she once again tried to make out their faces. But it was no good - if Asuka were to crane out her neck any further, her neural clip would probably poke in the way of the stream of light, casting a giant shadow onto the white screen, causing them to turn around... Which was precisely what she wanted.

Folding her hands together, entwining her index fingers and sticking out her thumb, she thrust them in front of the projector. She moved her pinkies up and down, and the shadow of a dog on the screen opened its mouth.

Down at the bottom, Rei was staring at the screen, chewing the pop-corn herself and Shinji had bought beforehand. This was her first time going to an actual movie theatre, an event she was not too enthusiastic about before, since the first child did not watch a lot of movies at all. In fact, her apartment did not even have a television set. But the enormous screen in front of her seemed to draw her interest with its sheer size, making her tense up whenever something jumped out on-screen.

It was Ayanami herself, who had chosen this horror flick to watch. Shinji, who was not a fan of the genre, and who, for the last twenty minutes was desperately squeezing on his date's pale hand out of terror - a gesture neither of the two seemed to notice, now realised that perhaps letting Rei choose a movie was a bad idea. The albino, who had simply chosen a poster with what looked like to her, a shy, lonely girl, not unlike herself, was now finding out that the same girl was dismembering members of the family that had moved into the house where the girl herself had been killed years ago.

Now, the screen was zooming on an ominously trembling cupboard door in the kitchen, where the wife was trapped, desperately clawing at the unexpectedly locked door on the other side of the room. Judging by how the movie had gone so far, Rei fully expected the culprit to pop out from underneath the kitchen sink, and proceed to maim the woman. However, a rudimentary representation of a dog's silhouette was not something the blue-haired girl was prepared for. Her mouth, full with pop-corn, stopped chewing for a second in amazement before Rei finally turned around, figuring out the shadow was a simple obstruction for the light, which must have been behind her. Up in the projector room, something that looked like a head with one horn rapidly ducked and flew out of the way. Rei turned back to the movie, but once again froze as she realised her left hand was being held.

* * *

Halfway through homeroom period, the classroom door started moving very slowly. Shinji, who was feeling particularly restless, in part due to the emptiness of Ayanami's seat in front of him, and his concerns about the reasons for it being vacant, noticed it first. Inch by inch, the door slid to the left. By now, whoever was on the other side, should have entered inside, but, instead, the door stopped. Nobody entered.

By now, half the students in 2-A were observing the doorway, intrigued by the development, but the teacher had not seemed to notice yet.

As it turned out, the usual homeroom teacher was sick. Usually, Misato would take over his duties, but last Friday, as Shinji found out on his way to school today, she handed in her resignation letter. With the angels back, she had to spend more and more time at NERV.

So, instead, in her place, was the maths teacher, Kamikita-sensei. Even though he was younger than even Misato, already, at his age, he was a real hardass. So when, in the corner of his eyes, a mop of red hair topped with a single, even redder, ornament floated just centimetres above desks, seeking to slip by the teacher's field of vision, Kamikita did not hesitate to act.

"Soryu, this is the millionth time you are late for my class." - The teacher did not even lift his eyes from the book he was engrossed in. - "Friday detention."

Groaning, the mop of hair stood up and dejectedly carried on towards its desk, now only on its two legs. Looking over her shoulder, Hikari glanced at her tired-looking best friend. The trio finished the work really late last night, barely wrapping up their efforts before midnight. Asuka, who lived by herself and had nobody to wake her up in case she overslept, looked like she had just gotten up seconds ago. A short battle raged in the class rep's mind, which her dark side promptly won.

"S-Sir!" - She called out nervously, not used to telling lies. - "The home economics club has an important cooking exam this Friday! T-the date was decided in advance so it fits all the students, and I do not know whether a rescheduling could even be possible!"

"Is that so?" - An indifferent response came from behind the paper-back green cover. Not getting the desired reaction, Hikari's energy withered down. Her index finger that was thrust above her head slackened, and she sank back down into her chair.

"And!" - A more enthusiastic voice began from behind Hikari. "The history research club had an important field trip to the ruins of Tokyo-2 planned! And without one of our three members, it would be more like a date, and I'm sure using school funding to arrange a date is against the rules." - Yuuna finished off, looking proud of what to her, seemed like an intricate web of lies, but, in reality, was flimsy logic at most.

"Fine, fine!" - The maths teacher dropped his book down and looked from one girl to another. - "No detention for Soryu on Friday." - But before the pig-tailed girl could exchange congratulatory looks with her blonde-haired comrade, Kamikita-sensei continued. - "Next Friday, then."

"_Arschloch_" - Asuka muttered quietly, and her head dropped against her desk with a resonating thud.

* * *

With the clock above the blackboard making anyone looking at it aware that homeroom was three quarters of the way through, the door slammed open, and a mop of messy brown hair had thrust through the breach. A girl was poking her head through the doorway, looking around the classroom with a cheerful smile.

The noisy sound of her entrance was so loud that it attracted the attention of almost everybody inside immediately. But the visitor was unfazed by the attention, and kept visually scrolling around the room, a cheery expression on her pleasant-looking face. That was the case, until she locked eyes with a certain brown-haired boy. Her head, which was the only visible part of her body, jolted upwards and went bright red. Unhooking her hand from the door, the head hastily disappeared back into the corridor.

"Kirishima-san." - The teacher's voice stopped her flight with a forceful voice.

"Y.. yes.." - The resigned tone signalling defeat, the downturned dark-haired head floated back into the room, now followed by the rest of her slender body. The brunette stopped halfway between the teacher's desk and the door, facing the students of 2-A, who were looking up at the unfamiliar girl with interest.

"Go ahead, introduce yourself." - Kamikita continued to indifferently page through his book, now propping his head up with an arm. It was as if the young teacher had eyes everywhere on his body - he hardly even lifted his gaze off the blue soft-cover novel when the girl came in.

"Umm.." - Looking down, the military AVE pilot was fidgeting with her fingers and trying to hide her flushed expression behind her brown bangs of hair. - "My name is Mana.. Kirishima." - She wanted to make eye contact with the class again, but, for some reason, an irrational fear of locking gazes with Shinji got the better of her, and she continued speaking softly into the floor. - "It's nice to m-meet you all, I hope we can become fr-.. friends."

"Right, right, friends, very good." - For the first time, an impatient Kamikita-sensei finally lifted up his eyes and gave the classroom a long, searching look. There were only a couple of empty seats left - and one already belonged to Ayanami, who happened to be absent.

'This is such a bother. With the old senile geezer, who was normally in charge of this class, off sick, and Katsuragi off the staff, looks like I'll be in charge of 2-A for the foreseeable future.' - One by one, his gaze travelled around the room, stopping on the faces of students familiar to him. - 'How did this many delinquents even get put into a single class?'

Over at the window side of the room were Suzuhara, Aida and Ikari. Always responsible for constant noise and disruptions, and the threat of detentions never deterred them from behaving like they usually did. Right now, the trio was doing nothing to break the rules, but Kamikita-sensei knew better than to relax around the three evil masterminds.

Then there was Miyazaki, typing away in her cell phone like the air-headed blonde that she was. She could never prove a theorem or solve a question to save her life, but every time her tests would come back from external moderation, which she would always ask for, her wrong answers mysteriously changed from horrendously wrong to spectacularly right, lifting her mark sixty or seventy percent higher. What was even up with that? Something was obviously suspicious about the whole procedure. The teacher reminded himself to actually find out one day who exactly does the _external marking_ around here.

And on the far end of the classroom, there was probably the worst one. Her blue eyes were staring a hole in the young teacher all the way from the back desks, still angry about next week's detention, partially succeeding in making him uncomfortable. Soryu's constant truancy irritated Kamikita to no end. Half the time, she was not there, and when she was, Asuka would either arrive half an hour late, or tactlessly get up and leave ten minutes into the lesson. But what made it even worse, was that, unlike Miyazaki, Soryu actually knew her work. There was no chance of catching her out with an involved example in front of the class. Once, last semester, he tried to embarrass her in everyone's plain sight by giving her a question to do from second year university-level calculus. Kamikita was ecstatic when, midway through trying to do it, she put the chalk down and walked back to her seat, a growl of "Idontknow" signalling her defeat. But his euphoria only lasted until the next day's mathematics period, when, by the time he walked in, the redhead was standing in front of everyone, working the white chalk against the board's dark surface. The solution by method of first principles was already written up on the blackboard's left side, and the German girl, standing on the right side, was half way through a more elegant solution that used theorems and formulas. And, of course, she packed her bag up and left as soon as she finished.

Kamikita knew better than to check the work - the right answer of '1' stood out on both sides, underlined by Soryu in order to attract attention to it. He did not know what pissed him off more - her blatant disrespect or the fact that she was wasting her talent.

But, at present, the girl interested him for another reason - the last empty seat in the classroom was just next to hers.

"Kirishima, you can go sit over there." - Satisfied that the problem of seating was now solved, the young teacher promptly turned back to the book. But the brunette was less so, looking in terror at Ayanami's seat in front of Shinji's. The boy greeted his acquaintance from NERV with a slight waving motion of the hand.

"B-b-but Sensei! I can't sit there! It'll.. it'll.." - Mana's panicked voice surprised Kamikita, who stared up at her, looking like he was doubting her sanity.

"What are you on about, Kirishima?" - Kamikita's hopes for her being a bright, enthusiastic student, were vanishing by the second. - "You have two legs and two thighs, so you _can_ sit there. Just go sit next to Soryu, you're wasting the classes' time."

"Soryu..?" - Mana turned to where the girl, whom she met two days prior at NERV, and whose name she correctly remembered, was sitting with a look of disgust at the world etched onto her three-quarter-European face.

"Yes, Soryu, that _part-time student_ with the red hair over at the back." - Kamikita observed the new girl's expression change from fright to one of shame, as she again lowered her head in an effort to hide her red face with her hair.

"Oh.. Okay." - She set off towards her assigned seat next to her fellow pilot, escorted by a few giggles pertaining to her peculiar reaction to getting a desk. - "Shut up." - Mana grumbled with a somewhat cute expression of anger and scrunched brows, sitting down at the empty desk, turning the giggles into surprised "ooooh"s.

* * *

The English teacher's droning about Macbeth was interrupted by the chime of the bell, accompanied by the students' sighs of relief. It was finally lunch, and a mass of students rushing to get to the cafeteria line first literally swooped the frail European man out into the corridor in mid-sentence about homework. Those that were not planning on buying cafeteria-made lunches, were busy taking out bento boxes out from the depths of their school bags. Among those students were the Three Stooges, as they were sometimes called for their antics by the female half of the class population - Touji, Kensuke and Shinji. Lunches in tow, the trio made for the exit, stopping to quickly talk to Hikari, the class rep, on their way. Well, only Touji actually talked to her, the others patiently waited for their friend by the door.

Mana, who carefully unearthed her own lunch, set it down on her desk, and observed as Hikari gave Touji a nervous bow, that looked apologetic, and hurried past the other two boys, waving them goodbye as she dashed past. Touji, looking crestfallen, gave the dustbin next to the door a light kick, and joined his friends, exiting the room.

Before depression at the prospect of eating lunch alone could set in, the brunette started to feel some kind of stare, and, true enough, her body jolted up at the sudden realisation of a blue-eyed face staring at her intensely, lips on that face parted in a sly grin.

"Aw, disappointed because loverboy didn't invite you to lunch today, huh?" - her voice pretentiously tragic, the redhead pouted at Mana.

"What are you talking about?!" - for the second day in a row, Asuka was getting on Mana's nerves. Why would she even be disappointed? It's not like she expected him to ditch his friends and hang out with somebody he just met two days ago. So no, disappointment was definitely not it.

"Don't worry." - Asuka took her own lunch out and set it on top of her desk, and "consoled" the other pilot arrogantly. - "Being like everyone else is nothing to be ashamed of - almost every girl here likes that ragdoll of a man for some reason." - Realizing something, Asuka added really quickly, running her hand through her red hair - "Except me, of course."

"You have no right to call him that!" - This time, Mana was definitely clear with her emotions - how dare she say something like that! - "He saved my life, how can you even-mmmfff!" - The angry tirade was cut short by Asuka's hand blocking the brunette's mouth. Pulling in close to Mana's ear, the redhead hissed with anger of her own.

"_Are you stupid_?! What are you saying, there are still _people_ here!" - When Mana started looking around at the several surprised gazes the pair was receiving, Asuka finally let go of her face, satisfied that the muffled screaming had stopped, with the military pilot apparently understanding what the redhead meant. - "Get up." - Asuka put her arms on her hips, regarding her colleague with an insolent look. - "Grab your lunch, you're going to eat with me."

Mana did not really know what to do. On one hand, everything about Asuka grinded her gears, she was brash and pushy, but, on the other hand, she was the only person to invite her to have lunch together, and she would awfully hate to eat alone on her first day in a new school.

"Well?" - Mana looked up and saw that the redhead had already stacked her own lunch on top of the brunette's, and was busy carrying it out of the class. - "If you don't catch up with me, I guess I'll just eat your lunch by myself."

"Wait!" - Sighing, Mana pushed in her chair and hurriedly followed the other girl outside. Catching a glimpse of red hair walking away in the crowded passageway, the brunette increased her pace and soon caught up with her colleague. Looks like Asuka already decided everything, and, having come this far, going back to the class would just be a waste of break time, Mana thought. - "Where are we going? I thought the cafeteria was over there." - The brunette looked back at where the bulk of the crowd was heading; she and Asuka were definitely heading the wrong way.

"Oh, relax, will you?" - Now that Mana had caught up with the German girl, Asuka increased her pace. - "You should really trust your fellow pilots more. Oh, and if you blurt something out again about somebody saving anybody's life at... where we _work_," - Asuka changed her wording to be more conspicuous as a straggler from the crowds passed within earshot - "I really _will_ eat your lunch."

"Yes, yes, I know, I made a mistake, okay? I just forgot where I was.." - Mana thought back to the incident in the classroom. - "But can you please not bad-mouth Shinji? I really _am_ grateful to him for.." - the brunette was cut off by the redhead, who, after making sure she saw nobody else in the hallway in the distant part of the school building they were at.

"Correction, fourth child." - Asuka stopped and turned to face the other girl, hints of steel and frustration came through in her voice. - "I don't know where you get your information from, but your _precious Shinji_ saved nobody. He just cried and hoped everything would turn out okay, like always. I.." - Asuka's anger dried up, and her mind debated whether she should continue. It was one thing to have pride, but it was another to be blatantly arrogant. She turned forward and started walking again. "Somebody else saved you and Rei."

It was now the brunette's turn to stop, as her mind required some time to process these new finds. She and Rei were incapacitated, and if it was not Shinji who defeated the angel, then that left..

"It was you?" - once again catching up to the redhead, Mana peeked at her expression, which was one of frustration.

"Of course it was me. " - Sounding tired, as if exhausted from explaining simple facts over and over, Asuka stopped in front of a worn-out door almost at the end of the hallway. - "Did you see another human being competent enough at NERV to do it?" - She stared down the brunette and rapped her knuckles on the door in a melodic pattern. When Mana did not answer, she finished it for her. - "I didn't think so."

But Mana remembered very well - she herself sifted through her AVE program's logs, the fatal blow should have been delivered by AVE-01, she was sure of it. Maybe Asuka was lying, but why would she do it? The redhead did not seem like the type to impress people with made-up stories. She decided to take another look at the files once she got home.

While Mana was lost in thought, the door creaked open, and an oddly-coloured golden eye framed by ashen-blonde hair examined the girls. After a second, the door swung wide open, revealing an almost pitch-dark room with the owner of the eye and hair nowhere to be seen. Mana could make out a table and some chairs, but nothing else stood out.

"Really, Yuuna?" - Asuka sighed and walked inside. Even though she disappeared in the black of the room, Mana could still make out her voice. - "I thought I told you to knock it off with this!" - Then came a loud knock followed by irate grumbling. - "Ow, _scheiße_! Just turn on the lights, damn it!"

Mana stood hesitant at the entrance, unsure of what was happening, but pretty sure that if she were to turn back now, she could kiss her handmade lunch goodbye. The girl nearly let out a scream when a face, framed by dark-red hair materialised back out of the dark abyss and looked her straight in the eyes with a hint of a smile.

"Don't just stand there. Are you stupid?"

A hand grabbed her by the wrist in a strong vice and forcefully pulled Mana inside.

* * *

Shinji was looking at his call history on the simple cell phone he had bought years ago. Several minutes prior, he tried calling Rei, but received no answer. The albino pilot might not have had a cellular phone of her own, but at least she had a landline number. But today, for some reason, she would not pick up. Either she was not at home or.. Shinji did not want to think about the latter too much. What if something about him rubbed her the wrong way on Saturday? What if Rei never wants to see him again?

'No, no, no.' - Shaking his head to clear the mind of such thoughts, Shinji had to reason with himself.

'Nothing out of the ordinary happened, right? We just grabbed something to eat, then watched a movie, then..' - The boy recalled the details of his weekend date. - 'She did not seem upset or anything when we said goodbye, definitely.. Oh well, maybe she could not come to school today because of some kind of NERV thing.'

"Ow!" - a hard poke in the ribs brought Shinji out from the depths of thought.

"Hey man, if you arent hungry, y'know, I don't mind finishing it!" - Touji, who was already done with his food, eyed the boy's half-eaten lunch with a fiery hunger in his eyes. - "Even though it will take tremendous effort, I am willing to do at least that much for my friend!" - he gave Shinji a dubious thumbs-up.

"Boy, I sure am glad to have a buddy I could count on to eat all my food." - Kensuke jumped to his feet off of the concrete roof as soon as he saw Touji making similar advances on his own lunch.

"Some friends you are. " - The boy in the tracksuit crossed his arms with a put-on look of suffering. The roof, where the trio usually had their lunch, bore no signs of anybody else eating here today, making Shinji and Kensuke the only other possible sources of food out there. Having forgot to pack the other half of his bento at home, he was definitely still hungry.

Recently, Hikari, who always had generous extra portions of lunch, started to join them on the roof, meaning that the growing boy never ran out of food. But today, she had some kind of council meeting to go to, so the lack of half of his lunch was a catastrophe for Touji.

"I don't mind sharing." - Shinji, who usually did not eat much, separated out some rice balls and eggs and dropped them into his friend's empty lunchbox.

"Me neither, I just got to make sure I'm not starving as well first, that's all." - Kensuke slurped up some spaghetti offloaded some food as well. Meatballs with spaghetti joined Shinji's food.

Inspired by his success in sponging off of his friends, Touji dug into the food that was now his.

"See, your girlfriend might have ditched you," - Kensuke sat back, admiring the warm weather. - "But real friends will always be there for you."

"WUT WUP!" - Mouth full of rice and meatballs, Touji's initial response made no sense. - "Shut up!" - he continued, having swallowed the impeding mass of nutrients. - "She's not my girlfriend."

"And she never will be, with manners like that." - Shinji winced at the tiny bits and pieces of food flying out of his friend's mouth after his initial retort.

"You guys just don't get it." - Having finished the donations in one go, Touji swallowed and also sat back, arms behind his head. - "Girls like old-fashioned manly men. There is nothing more manly than wolfing down your food."

"Ri-ight." - Shinji's attention was momentarily taken away by his mobile phone, which vibrated once, signalling the arrival of an SMS.

'Pilot practice today at the HQ, 5PM.

Misato3'

"Speaking of girlfriends, Shin-man" - Kensuke moved himself in dangerously close. - "Is that yoo-uurs?"

"No, It's not!" - Shinji snapped back with a bit too much force, trying to hide the incriminating message away from the friends, oblivious to his extra-curricular duties.

"Why so defensive then?" - Touji, who decided that Shinji was definitely acting suspicious, made a grab for the phone. - "Come on, we've been discussing my gir-... I mean Hikari!" - Unfazed by his Freudian slip, Touji pressed on. - "Just let us see what's going on with you two!"

"I.. I can't!" - Shinji was desperately trying to keep a hold on the phone, but Touji was way stronger.

"Kensuke!" - Touji could not quite free the phone from his friend's clutches, and called for help from his other friend. - "Battle plan LOL6!"

The bespectacled boy had to think about it, but in the end remembered what exactly LOL6 was. Jumping behind Shinji, he grabbed the boy's sides and started tickling him.

"N-no-ha-ha you ca-ha-ha-n't look at that!" - But Shinji's struggle was in vain, he could feel his grip loosening, and, before long, the phone had changed hands.

"Pilot.. HQ.. Misato? As in Katsuragi-san? But I thought she quit?" - The puzzled expressions of his friends was the worst possible outcome of this. Would they find out what it all means? Pilots were made to swear strict secrecy when joining NERV, and this went against every rule and regulation he was aware of.

"Yeah, what is this, Shin-man?"

Shinji was aware of how bad he was at lying and gulped. This would have to be his best lie to date.


	7. Chapter 7 - Broken

_A/N: I would like to thank the people that have taken the time to review, any kind of feedback is really helpful._

CHAPTER 7

Broken

"Ittadakimasu!"

The three girls were gathered around an old, heavy, round wooden table in the middle of an abandoned classroom. Apparently, the room, which, to this day, faintly smelled of spirits and chemicals, used to be a storage space for the school's science laboratory, but when the parent-teacher association decided to approve the transfer of the stored chemicals to a room closer to the lab itself, the old room was just forgotten about in the bureaucratic confusion that followed. Or, at least that was what the blonde Yuuna maintained for the whole time that Asuka knew her.

The German did not believe it one bit - her friend was the kind of person to produce a doctor's note, excuses to get out of detention, and any other important documents "out of her ass", as the expression said. There was no way that a whole, perfectly usable room would just be abandoned without nobody noticing. Sure, this was a far-away part of the third floor, and hardly anybody ever came through the hallway outside, but Asuka refused to believe someone out there could be that incompetent.

Regardless of the place's back-story, now it was the headquarters of the History Research Club, which could boast a whopping three whole members. The dark room also doubled up as the blonde teenager's personal hangout, with the new sound-proof door and wall coating, doubled up with the fact that the golden-eyed girl was one of the only two people possessing a key, it made for a perfect hiding place, where the two friends would sometimes come to cut classes.

"So," - Yuuna, who Mana recognized as a girl from her own class, started, gently covering her full mouth with her hand as she talked. - "How do you like our secret hideout, Mana-chan?"

Hearing the question, the brown-haired girl instinctively took another look around the room. It was not a spacious affair, but it seemed that the space that was there had been managed well - besides the large table in the middle of the room, a couple of couches stood in the far corner under the windows. A small work desk with a laptop computer on top of it stood in another corner, next to a rather large filing cabinet. The small windows were blinded shut, coupled with the bright yellow light coming off from the lamp just above the table where the girls sat, it would have made it all but impossible to tell the time of day, If not for a clock hanging up on the wall.

"Secret hideout.." - Mana repeated carefully. - "Well the place sure looks useful, but is it really that secret?" - This was the first time the pilot had seen something like this. A classroom turned into somebody's hangout - that did not happen often in real life, outside of manga.

"Don't worry" - Yuuna finished her mouthful of food and could now giggle freely - "For all the time that I kept coming here, nobody ever found it!" - she finished off with a smile.

"What do you mean, _I_ found it." - Asuka grumbled on the girl's left, poking away at her lunch of salad and rice as she referred to a certain event from last year.

* * *

_Trying to hide from Hikari and her attempts of dragging the redhead to the Cooking Club activities, Asuka came across an unfamiliar door and thought it to be a perfect hiding spot. Alas, to her disappointment, the door was locked. But a lock was no problem for the great Asuka Langley Soryu. Sending the door off its hinges with one savage kick, Asuka ran inside._

_'Scheiße!'_

_A classroom missing a door would certainly have an effect opposite to the one Asuka desired. Quickly picking up the poor thing, she placed it back in the doorway and leaned her back against it from inside the room, propping it up in place. Now that she thought about it, why did a school with mostly Japanese sliding doors have a European one as well? Her thoughts were cut short by the sound of footsteps outside. It sounded like somebody had gone past the redhead's hiding place, and then returned back the way they came._

_With the "danger" gone, Asuka could actually focus her eyesight on the dark inside of the room. The blinds hanging on the windows, which were uncharacteristically narrow for a classroom, obscured most of the light coming in, making it really difficult to make anything out. But on the other side, something that looked like a tiny yellow stream of light was pouring out from a crack._

_The German girl did not get scared easily, not at all, but this was slowly starting to look like one of those cheap American horror flicsk that she liked so much. It did not help her cause when the ray of light started getting wider with a slow squeak - the door was opening. All thoughts of running away were in vain - Asuka's feet were rooted to the spot - she was like a pretty, red-haired deer caught in these strange headlights._

_The tension came to a hit when the door stopped opening for a split second, before slamming open._

_"A-ah, so good!"_

_A figure jumped out from inside the brightly lit area behind the door, its hands messing around what looked like a white towel on its head. It took Asuka a while to register that the figure, a rather well-endowed girl, judging by the two round silhouettes around her torso, was completely naked. The inevitable occurred when, in the now somewhat-lit room, the girls locked eyes with each other._

_"EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" - Both let out shrill screams, Asuka's probably being the girliest one that she had let out throughout her whole life. _

* * *

"Well, that just makes you _special_, doesn't it, Asuka-chan!" - The redhead just sighed in response. Sure, Yuuna was a good friend and fun to be around, but she never took anything seriously. That side of her personality often irritated the redhead to no end.

"Of course I'm _special_," - the redhead never did miss a chance to blow her own trumpet. - "But you do know how much trouble we could get into they find out where we go to skip class, right?"

"Besides the fact that only _you_ actually come here to skip class,"- her friend quipped back. - "The chances of anybody seeing it _are _really slim, trust me. And anyway, the rules and regulations don't say anything about punishment for using abandoned classrooms."

"That.. doesn't even.." - Asuka sighed in frustration and turned to the newcomer in the room. - "Never mind. Anyway, we need a third member for our club. Keen about history, Kirishima?"

The sudden question caught the brunette off-guard. She had not even settled in at the new school, much less decided on which clubs she was going to join. Mana was between a rock and a hard place - she did not particularly want to join a club about history, but, at the same time, when somebody asked her about it so bluntly, saying no to their face would just disappoint them.

"History?" - The military pilot's gaze kept shifting between the other girls. - "You mean this doubles up as your club room?"

"See, plus you're not too bad at figuring stuff out." - Asuka brought a small leaf of lettuce to her mouth and threw it in with an audible munch. - "It would not be _that_ much of a pain having you around."

"What kind of history.. exactly?" - Mana could not decide whether the previous comment from the redhead was a weird compliment or just a blatant insult. But, in the end, deciding that coming from somebody like who she figured Asuka to be, it tended to be more of a compliment, and paid it no heed.

"We-ell." - Having finished her food, Yuuna rose to her feet and strolled towards the filing cabinet. "Gochisousama. We are the History Research Club. And, it might surprise you, but we do historical research." - The blonde girl giggled, visibly satisfied at her own rather lame joke. - "We try and dig up facts from days gone by and check whether they agree with the conventional interpretation. For example, just yesterday, I discovered the true origin of Second Impact!"

Even though it should have seemed unlikely that an event as well covered-up as Second Impact could be found out about by a mere teenager researching history, a pang of worry shot through Mana. She immediately turned to Asuka, but was confused straight away when she saw the redhead merely roll her eyes and tilt her head down into one of her arms. Red hair draping onto the brown wood of the desk, she looked at Yuuna with a tired expression.

"An alien actually crashed into Antarctica, opening a Dirac sea, or a mini-black hole above it, melting the icecaps and - " - Her enthusiastic voice was cut off as her German friend interrupted her.

"That is what happens when you try to research history in the _weird parts_ of YouTube." - Asuka put her hand on her face, and looked back at Mana, her left eye peeking in the gap between Asuka's middle and index fingers as if telling the brunette 'I told you it was nothing'. Mana immediately understood - this was just some kind of wild guess that Asuka already knew about, not even close to the actual truth behind Second Impact.

"The weird parts of the internet are the absolute best when it comes to research!" - The club president pouted defensively and put her hands on Asuka's shoulders . - "At least _some_ of us come to club activities to actually do the club activities." - The blonde looked at Mana and grinned suggestively. - "Soryu is only here to stare at pictures of men in German World War II uniforms."

Asuka turned around , her long hair making a wide arc, some of it hitting the blonde hair of the girl above her.

"I do _not_ stare at any kind of uniforms!" - The tinge of red on her cheeks said otherwise.

"All right, all right!" - Yuuna stepped back and lifted her hands in the air defensively. "And besides, if you _do_ join, you can also come here whenever you like, and you can even use my mini-fridge!" - she pointed triumphantly to the little white steel box next to her desk. Noticing that this particular boon seemed to have no effect on Mana, she continued. - "You'll make somebody really happy if you do-o."

The blonde waltzed over to the closet and leaned her back against it, crossing her arms in the process.

"What do you mean?"

Yuuna's expression lit up, she was waiting for that exact question. In one swift move, she swung the closet door open, and... a skeleton popped out. It took a while for the brunette to register what exactly she was seeing - a yellow, bony skeleton was "smiling" at her with a full set of teeth from the inside. All colour had instantly vanished from Mana's face, and she brought both her hands over her mouth to stop a scream from escaping

The smile on Yuuna's face had changed into a wicked grin.

"Once you take his place in our club, his soul will be able to finally find peace" - Speaking with the scariest voice the blonde could muster, she bent towards Mana and scrunched up her hands in claw-like gestures. - "And you will stay with us forever-r-r-r-r!"

"And stuff like that is precisely why we can never get more than two members." - Asuka chimed in, after seeing the look of fright on Mana's features turn into one of confusion. - "It's just a fake medical one left here from when this room was still a storage space."

"It might be a fake skeleton" - The club pres pouted, - "But deep inside it's Joe Johnson, the third and final - and fake - member of our club. It just doesn't seem right to throw him out while we do not have enough people. Beggars can't be choosers." - Yuuna quickly locked up the closet door and returned to her seat in front of the other two girls, who had now also finished off their food. - "So, what do you say?"

A pregnant silence filled the room as both girls of the History Research Club looked at Mana, clearly waiting for an answer. Neither Asuka nor Yuuna were planning to induct anybody else in the club today, or even soon, for that matter, and not because nobody was actually interested in joining. It was just that neither have thought at any length about expanding, it being just the two of them suited them both. But when Yuuna saw that her friend had actually brought somebody with her, she made up her mind about it really fast. If you could stand Asuka even for a lunch break, you were a pretty chilled person in her book. And the redhead, who also did not seem against the idea of a new member, made it obvious to the brunette via body language that a "no" would be considered akin to an insult.

"Well," - But before Mana could start a proper answer, she felt her phone vibrate in her skirt pocket. And judging by Asuka's identical movement of her hand into the skirt of her own - the redhead had just experienced something similar.

"More pilot business, Asuka?" - Yuuna bent over Asuka's shoulder and peeked over at her phone's screen with curiosity, resulting in the redhead indignantly twisting her body away in an effort to keep her communication device away from prying eyes.

"If you _must_ know - yes." - She replied, visibly irritated with her friend's attempts at violating her privacy. Yuuna knew that the reaction was just an act, and just part of how her friend showed affection. But Mana, on the other hand, wore an expression of shock on her face. Not from something as silly as her classmate's reaction, but to the mere fact that, as far as she knew, Yuuna, an outsider, had just uttered the words "pilot".

"You.. She.." - Mana jumped up, at a loss for words, and for the first time that Asuka had seen her, had a look on her face that could be classified as angry. - "She _knows_?"

"Geez, fourth," - Asuka now looked back at the brunette, not even remotely worried about the fact. - "Relax, didn't I tell you to trust-"

"You were just going off at me in class about this, but you go ahead and do the exact same thing?" - Suddenly the shy, timid girl was gone, replaced by a fuming rogue. - "And you tell me not to worry?! You violated one of the most important rules they made us swear to!"

For a few seconds the girls stared each other down, before one finally broke the silence, realising that the usual excuse of "don't worry" will not work on a military girl valuing discipline.

"Fine." - A hint of steel once again appeared in Asuka's voice as she stood up to get her face on level with Mana's. - "You have a problem with me having friends?" - The brunette could see her blue eyes fill with anger as she slammed her palm on the wood of the table. - " Then get out."

Before the other girl could respond in kind and start something both might regret, Yuuna rushed to her German friend's side and gently pulled on her arm.

"Nope. As club president and default owner of this room, I forbid her from leaving." - With an apologetic smile, she looked at Mana. - "She doesn't really mean it, right, Asuka-chan?"

But contrary to the blonde's expectations, her friend snaked out her right arm out of her clutches with a sharp movement, and now, in turn, eyed the club president.

"I see." - after a few seconds, she finally spat out. - "_you're_ on her side too." - Without saying another word, the redhead simply packed up her things into her bag, strapped it over her shoulder, and stomped towards the exit and out into the corridor, leaving the other two girls inside.

"Wait, Asuka!" - But Yuuna's calls were in vain. When she stuck out her head into the doorway, Asuka was already nowhere to be seen. Smiling bashfully, the blonde walked back inside to face Mana, who, by the looks of it, had calmed down a bit, and looked uneasy about the situation as well.

"Please don't blame her for it." - Yuuna looked the brunette in the eyes as she sat down to pack up her own lunch utensils.- "When we first met, she... kind of passed out in here." - The blonde waved her arm, pointing in the corner where the couches were. - "I tried to get her off of the floor and put her down on the couches, but some kind of laminated card fell out. It turned out to be her NERV ID card, and the rest, well" - Pursing her lips, Yuuna swung her arms to the side in a "it just happened" gesture. - "So please, I am the one to blame, not her."

Looking down at her feet, Mana took some time to process the new information. If this _was_ true, then she screamed at the other pilot for no reason.. Well, maybe not for no reason, bringing a NERV ID card was a risky action to start with, but the redhead definitely could not help the other girl finding out.

"She never did make much in the way of friends." - Yuuna sighed, putting her elbows on the now-empty table, and resting her head on top of her hands, which scrunched up her cheeks comically. - "She had never told me about it in detail, but her mother disappeared without a trace when she was just a little kid, and when she did, her father just abandoned her at NERV soon after. Asuka even had to live at the NERV base for a while until they found a relative willing to take her in. Besides her aunt, no matter who they would call, everyone would just outright refuse to have anything to do with her." - the blonde's expression darkened as she recalled all bits and pieces that she had about Asuka's childhood.

"That.. is terrible!" - Mana had to put her hand on her mouth from the disturbing revelation.

"But I believe that underneath she is not as bad as what she wants people to believe." - Yuuna gestured Mana towards the door left open by Asuka. The bell had just rung and the girls needed to come back to class. - "So if you could try to at least give her a chance at being friends, I would consider that a personal favour to me." - She finished off, and squeezed Mana's shoulder lightly as they walked back across the hallway.

Looking in front of herself, past the masses of students now rushing back into their different classrooms, the brunette silently nodded, causing a smile to appear on Yuuna's thin lips again.

"You're a nice person." - The blonde sat down at her desk and winked at her new acquaintance, who, in turn, weakly smiled and walked down to her own seat. Needless to say, the seat to the right of hers was empty.

* * *

The sun was already beginning to slowly make its way down the sky over Tokyo-3 in a westerly direction, its blaze getting more and more of a yellow tint as the hours wore on. The shine, reflected generously by the numerous buildings in the residential district, each possessing an even more numerous amount of windows, made for a beautiful afternoon view.

But, inside room 402 in one of the tall concrete complexes, no afternoon light shone through. Gray drapes over the single window prevented the bright rays from shining through at all. Sitting down on the solitary chair in the apartment, Rei Ayanami was thinking. She had been thinking long and hard since morning, when she, as usual, woke up at half past five, and began her morning routine of getting ready for school.

But something was not quite right. She could not remember. It was Monday morning, the first day after the weekend. A weekend where something special _must_ have happened, she knew that much. But she just _could not remember_.

Still wrapped up in the white towel she had used to dry her body after the morning shower, Rei sat still for hours, unmoving, trying to rack her brain for the right memories. It felt like it was the most important thing in the world, and yet.. it just was not there.

In her hands she clutched a pair of dirty, brown-framed glasses, cracks going through both lenses. It was a trinket she had picked up from when _He_ rescued her from frying alive inside an electrified metal prison during a contact experiment gone wrong. He had always told her that piloting AVE was her top priority, and she had no reason to doubt Him, until _this _happened. All she had recalled was that _it_ made everything she had known before it obsolete - His instructions about AVE, the extensive programming training she had undergone, school, NERV, and even the cracked glasses she was holding. _It_ was so important, but... she just could not remember!

Rei folded herself double, resting her chest against her knees and wrapping her arms around her naked thighs. The albino pilot could feel her blue hair tickle her knees, but she was distracted by another sensation - something warm rolled against her right cheek and nested in the valley of skin made by her face and leg toughing each other. Reaching for the source of the strange feeling, Rei brought her fingers up to her face, and only now noticed that she was clenching her teeth so tight it made bumps of muscle bulge out under her cheeks.

'Tears?'

Tears! Yes, the liquid dropping from your eyes was called.. tears. Rei hung on to this sudden revelation as if it had meant the world to her. She had only started reading up on human emotion earlier this year in the NERV library, but she was utterly convinced that there could not be any way she would have forgotten about tears or.. anger. Anger! That was what the pale-skinned girl was feeling now, anger! Anger at the inability to remember, anger at her own uselessness. Why were things disappearing from her mind?!

-CRACK-

Before the blue-haired girl could realize what she was doing, the chair she was sitting on minutes ago had left her grip and flown towards the grey wall, producing a loud crashing noise. The chair then tumbled down onto the hard floor, landing on its side, but otherwise seemingly intact.

Walking swiftly towards the window, Rei swung open the drapes, flinching from the bright afternoon light now enveloping the room. Making a vicious grab for the handles locking the window in place, she slid it open with force and gripped the brown glasses she was holding in her other hand even tighter. The girl had her right arm wound up for a hard throw when she was interrupted by a soft, rhythmic pattern of knocking that sounded like it was coming from the apartment door.

"Ayanami? Can I come in?" - a familiar voice inquired.

Answering the door was the acceptable response to a summons at the door - this fact came back to Rei with less difficulty than the others, but the albino still had to consciously think and reason about it to remember the desired parts.

Dropping the glasses to the floor, she walked towards the entrance to her apartment with slow, steady strides, as if in a dream. Grabbing the round handle of the door, Rei twisted it and slowly pulled the metal knob towards herself. To her surprise, it had no effect. The door gave in a little bit, but then stopped in place, as if something else was holding it.

'Locked!' - she remembered. Yesterday, like she had usually been doing recently, the girl locked the door after she had come back from NERV and put the key.. 'On top of the cupboard!'

Quickly jumping onto the marble counter next to the sink with her bare delicate feet, Rei felt around on the top of the sticky, dusty cupboard for the familiar cold of metal. When she did, the pilot grabbed it and quickly jumped off onto the floor with a thud, and unlocked the door.

Finally having gotten it open, she evaluated the sight before her. It was a familiar boy of around her age, with short dark hair and dressed in dark pants and a white shirt. His face was of a different colour.

"A-Ayanami?!" - before the girl could reply, her unexpected guest quickly ran past her, eyes blocked by his hands.

Someone running into your apartment without an invitation was a hostile act, she recalled, but on the other hand made no effort to stop him.

"I.. kari.. -kun?" - His name! She remembered his name, the boy was another pilot of NERV, he was attending the same class at her at school, and... There was something else but she could not remember still. But Rei had to find out!

The albino turned around and drifted back into the only room in her home - the living room, which also acted as the bedroom and kitchen, letting out a soft gasp of surprise as her vision suddenly darkened, and she felt the soft touch of material on her body - the blue-haired girl instantly recognised it as the towel from earlier.

"Ayanami!" - The boy wrapped it around her pale body carefully, keeping his eyes on the wall next to him as he did so. - "You can't just answer the door n-naked!"

"I.. can't?" - Red eyes looked at the boy with surprise, but, nevertheless, Rei kept her grip on the ends of the towel, keeping herself decent.

'Naked.. I'm.. naked?!' - Quickly facing down and scanning herself, the albino ascertained that it was indeed so. Another gasp escaped her lips, and she hastily retreated to the bathroom, where Rei promptly put on her white plain underwear, a white blouse, and a blue skirt - the clothes she had prepared for attending school today, but neglected to put them on when she did not.

Emerging from the bathroom, she held her arms by her sides, which, together with her long skirt that hung from her waist in a wide arc, made her look like a fragile porcelain figurine. She did not quite understand why, but Rei could feel her cheeks burn.

"Is this better?" - The question fell on deaf ears as the boy answered with one of his own.

"Are you.. feeling okay, Ayanami?" - The albino noticed hints of an emotion she no longer understood in the boy's brown eyes and blinked once in surprise.

"I have sustained no injuries recently." - Looking down on herself once again, as if scanning her body for any harm, she answered.

For what seemed like ages, neither of them spoke, with one hesitant to speak, while the other oblivious of what to say.

"So.." - The boy began, nervously running his palm up and down on his other arm. - "Do you still want to.. go do.. something?" - Taking a couple of massive gulps, the boy looked like it took him a gargantuan effort just to say that one sentence.

"Are those my orders?" - Her head perked up at the notion, her blue hair bobbing slightly. - "I will if they are."

"I see." - The boy's head fell down a bit, and his posture slacked. - "It's just that.. I did not see you at school, so I was worried something had -"

"I am fine, Ikari-kun." - The boy was becoming more and more visibly uncomfortable, Rei could tell that much. - "Something important had come up, so I did not attend school today."

"I.. I see." - bowing quickly, the boy headed towards the door briskly. - "I'm sorry, Ayanami-san."

And just like that, he was gone. Rei stared at the open door, unsure of what to do. She had been so close to remembering! Was that boy part of what she had to remember?

A splitting pain tore through the albino's head. Unable to keep her balance, she dropped to her knees, holding her head. Why could she not remember! Gently lowering her body onto the floor, she started sobbing quietly.

* * *

"I hate this!"

Stripping down to her undergarments, a woman struggled to keep her balance, relying on a long wooden staff that she was holding in her right arm to bear some of her body weight. Having received word of the lilim's advances in their cross-barrier technology, the Council thought it wise to send her on another recon mission, this time to the Filia directly. With several years spent hiding amongst the lilim, Ishrafiil was the obvious choice. And, with the new spells for cross-barrier travel having been proven successful, this time it should have been less dangerous, but the angel knew otherwise.

For the first time in decades, the Alba family had gained the upper hand in the Council, shifting the balance of power from her father's old castle on the mainland all the way south to the Glacialis Islands, where that brute of an angel Zeruil ruled. Just a single thought of him had made her tanned skin crawl. She had to put in one hell of an effort to keep from _awakening_ right there and then, and flailing his guts all over the castle walls, when he had asked her father for her hand in marriage some years ago. Zeruil could have probably killed her and the whole royal guard with little effort, but even trying would have been satisfying to no end. As if the second crown princess of the great Rubra family, descended from the Creators themselves, would associate herself with such trash!

"I hate it!" - She repeated, purple hair flying up and down in waves, as she jumped in place, trying to fit both her legs into the costume, which had felt incredibly tight for some reason. And to make it worse, that pigdog Alba sympathiser, Rael, was standing right there in the dark room with her, watching with lust as various well-defined parts of her female anatomy bounced around.

She might have hated him too, but going against the Council's wishes for him to be the crossover supervisor would have been unwise at best. Him being him aside, he really knew his work.

"And to think," - The short, balding man dressed in a rather dirty cloak giggled incessantly. - "That I will spend the better part of the next year just _staring_ at that ridiculous body of yours!"

Another wave of disgust washed over Ishrafiil, but, once again, she knew better than to react.

"Stare all you want," - The purple-haired angel finally finished suiting up into the tights and corset, and rushed past the disgusting creature into the hallway, roughly brushing him aside with her slender, but powerful shoulder. - "Just keep in mind - _your_ majority in the council is slim at best. Who knows what will happen to some lowly servant once Rubra regains its rightful place?"

"But my dear," - The short man had to almost break into a run to catch his subordinate as she sped ahead through the torch-lit stone corridor towards the testing chambers. - "Who is this _you_ that you mention? Creators know we have the same blood flowing through our veins-oof" - Stopping suddenly in mid-stride, Ishrafiil turned around and brought her weapon right up to Rael's neck.

"I'd be very careful about slandering their Holy name," - Her purple irises barely peeked out from inside her eyes, narrowed down to tiny slits. - "The council might be one thing, but do not forget which family the real power lies with. I'd say you have made the wrong choice, dog." - The hissing of her voice died down as soon as Ishrafiil was satisfied with the man's reaction - his smarmy tone gone, all he could do was babble incoherently, staring at the very sharp gold crescent topping off her staff. - "Come on, I don't want to be late." - As suddenly as she stopped, the Rubra crown princess continued forward again, her heels drumming out a fast rhythm as she walked.

"You insolent.." - Rael only came to when she was out of sight and out of earshot. - "Once you get back, you are gone! You are _fucking_ gone!"

Hearing more footsteps in the distance behind him, the short man sped up ahead, limping slightly whenever his right foot touched the marble floor.

"Soon, soon. You'll _all_ be gone soon." - now muttering in a low whisper, he entered the room, where Ishrafiil was already strapped into the harness, which was being illuminated by a warm blue light from a bright circle underneath her. The sixteen singers around her were already chanting in a low, monotone voice, projecting their energy onto the harness. The armour-clad guards around the room had to cover their eyes as the light became brighter and brighter.

The last thing the young angel saw were Rael's tiny rat-like red eyes. She was not worried about him, she made sure to have paid two of the three guards inside extremely well, promising more when she returned safely. One of the guards, a half-lilim called Cain, was obsessed with her since childhood, she was sure of it. Backing up the gold coin for him with a peck on the cheek, Ishrafiil was dead sure of her safety. Trusting Cain to keep his unattainable crush's body intact, she tilted her head back, sending long purple hair flying onto the floor, closed her eyes, and relaxed. The familiar feeling of being lifted high up swept over her body and mind.

* * *

_"I found today to be enjoyable." - The pair of children stood in front of a run-down apartment building in the residential district, which was home to one of them. The girl's face, lit up by the setting sun, possessed a tiny but unmistakable smile. - "Thank you, Ikari-kun."_

_"I'm glad." - The boy's own lips also grew wide in a smile. - "You know.. If you liked it, we can go again any time."_

_"I am not otherwise engaged on Monday afternoon." - The girl continue, her usual even tone of voice was now riddled with little jumpy notes of excitement. - "We can walk together from school to whatever event you have planned."_

_"Okay, I'll.. I'll see you on Monday then." - The boy turned around and was about to leave, when he was stopped by his conversation partner._

_"Wait, Ikari-kun." - Remembering what she read about last night, the blue haired girl grabbed the boy's hand in a tight grip. - "Adolescent magazines dictate that I must.." - She trailed off as she brought her mouth to the boy's cheek, filling the air with the sound of a soft smacking of lips, and the boy's cheeks with a crimson colour, matching the evening sun._

_Stunned by the unexpected gesture, the boy slowly brought his free hand to his cheek in surprise. His mind distracted, he barely saw the girl hurry off and disappear in the entrance of the building._

_That night, Rei Ayanami could not sleep. Just one more day of training at NERV, and then Monday would come. She hoped the new pills that Ritsuko gave to her would help calm her down so she could go to bed. She thrust a couple into her mouth and washed them down with water._


	8. Chapter 8 - Black-and-White

CHAPTER 8

Black-and-White

The 80 by 120 photograph, slightly wrinkled from age felt pleasantly cool as his fingers touched the laminated print. Contrary to what he had told his son that day at the graveyard, he_ did_ save one. A blue-haired woman was smiling without a care in the world, eyes shut and teeth bared open in a pleasant grin. Gendo knew that his Yui was still alive. He had almost no tangible proof to back it up, but he _knew_ it. The woman smiling at him from the photograph was the only person in the entire world who he could say cared about him, she was the only one to accept him for who he is. So Gendo _had_ to get her back.

The NERV Commander had not been in contact with SEELE for ages - the unexpected two year hiatus in angel attacks left little to discuss between the head of NERV and the secretive committee - aside from the seeming failure of their scenario. But now, that the attacks have resumed, he was expecting a summons to the conference room any day. But there was another important event that had transpired in this time. Two years is an awfully long time when one has nothing to do except think. So Gendo thought - about everything, and his wife in particular. She had disappeared in the same way billions of victims had on the day of Second Impact, but with one difference - it happened several years after it. And as he had recently found out with the help of a certain spy he trusted very little, Ryoji Kaji, on the exact same day that another parent of an AVE pilot disappeared the same way - Kyoko Soryu. Further investigation placed their disappearance approximately within an hour of each other.

The bearded man took off his orange-shaded glasses and wiped beads of sweat off his forehead. For so long before, he had thought his life partner was dead, but in reality, there was an ever-increasing chance she could still be alive. The lack of a body, the near-perfect timing with the disappearance of another leading NERV scientist, and her intimate relationship with the leading figure of NERV Japan made her someone more valuable alive than dead - the leverage her captors would have over Ikari would be enormous. And judging by how both Yui and Kyoko seemed to vanish into thin air, the perpetrators were not likely human. No human could possibly bypass several dozen guards and cameras in the respective military complexes in Japan and Germany in a mere instant. As unlikely as it would have seemed some time ago, Gendo was sure he had stumbled onto the truth - those behind the disappearance of the scientist were none others than the same beings behind the Second Impact - the beings from another world, or the angels, as the official documents called them.

Making sure his face was now dry and sported the same stony expression as ever, Gendo Ikari carefully slid the photograph back under the piles of documents inside one of his desk's drawers and put his unusually-coloured glasses back on. If his assumptions were correct - he _had_ to find a way to bring his wife back. For now, SEELE seemed content with merely sitting back and protecting the world from the otherworldly beings, but for the dark-haired man, this war had taken a whole new meaning. For better or for worse, he _had_ to bring this fight to the enemy, and free his one true love. Right now, who knows what kind of predicament she could be in. Every second spent doing nothing in this ridiculously large office could be the difference between her life and death, and between his own happiness and sorrow.

Weeks upon weeks of sifting through data that Yui's replacement - Ritsuko - had been extracting from the Scorcher had driven him to a conclusion - there was more than one way to reach the Interim, the AVE units were not the only means. Some of the code seemingly catered for a direct brain-to-brain connection with Adam, one that did not require any kind of electronic intermediary. The pilot children all possessed this seemingly innate ability to interact with the alien brain directly - but, alas, the secret of this connection eluded the NERV science team.

The Commander was sure of one thing, though - there was no way in hell that things would proceed from inaction. The secret was out there to be found out, and sitting idly waiting for commands from SEELE would not bring him any closer to finding Yui. So the children _had_ to start frequent operations in the Second World - as some called it - right now. This was the only shot at finding a way into _their_ dimension.

The other pilots from London and Bethany should be joining soon, adding to his already sizable force of child soldiers with extraordinary powers, which, unfortunately for his plans, they possessed only in the Interim. But if these powers were indeed not the limit, Ritsuko's research would help the cause immensely. The code was all there, which opened up possibilities like inter-dimensional travel, but all simulations the science division organised to try and coerce those abilities out in the simulations were so far in vain.

Noticing a new message in one of the secure relay chat windows, he slowly got up and pushed in his chair. Ikari had already dismissed his second-in-command Fuyutsuki, so he had to attend the long-awaited meeting with SEELE on his own. Might have been for the better - he thought. It would be obviously much easier to feed him false information, if need came to be, if his Second-in-Command did not actually attend the conference. Standing in the doorway, Gendo gave the empty, dark moonlit room one last side glance, before locking up and heading out towards the sublevels.

"I'll find you. Yui."

* * *

"Request denied, _Ikari_." - Gendo could hear the acid seethe through Lorenz Keel's voice sounding in the dim-lit room out of one of the huge sound transmission pillars. His expression might not have been showing it, but inside, the dark-bearded man was boiling with rage.

"With all due _respect_, sir" - He replied, placing an unnatural-sounding emphasis on the second last word. - "I believe that.."

"Bringing in more children to the area of operations will interfere with our carefully-laid out plan." - The voice from pillar 01 continued, as if finishing the sentence for the NERV director, twisting it to his own meaning. - "The scenario requires that we follow even the most minute details exactly as written out."

"But even the MAGI.." - again, the commander's protests were cut short, this time, by a voice higher in pitch than the previous one.

"To hell with the MAGI!" - it had begun to sound like the committee was starting to get impatient with the course of the conversation. - "Do not let our final goal out of sight, Ikari - we are fighting to make sure that we triumph over the angels and not the other way around. Any risk-" - This time, it was the SEELE member who was not allowed to finish his sentence, his ranting halted by sound from 01's column.

"_Thank you,_ herr Adler." - Interrupting a fellow committee member, Keel's voice was getting more and more of an annoyed ring to it, not just from interacting with that meddlesome head of NERV, but also from having to put his own allies in their place. - "There will be a time and a place for us to send our troops into the angels' world, and enslave it for humanity's glory, but do not expect that time to come soon."

"Understood." - The word was the only response Ikari could muster, fuming at the committee's stubbornness. His plans were not yet thwarted in the least - having to be a sneaky bastard had never discouraged him from taking independent decisions before - but now this all meant the start of a long and effort-heavy process that would no doubt take its toll on the man.

"And Ikari," - This time, Keel's voice held an almost apologetic tone. - "_When_ we do give the green light for such preparations, do not expect any resources from Bethany."

Hearing no answer from the NERV commander, Keel took the absence of a reaction as a signal to continue.

"I was informed two days ago that the base had been disbanded. All operations have ceased and any important material has been destroyed before handing the land back over to the Russian government." - As if enjoying the effective silence the news created, he carried on - "_Their_ First-in-Command did not take the news too well - Commander Petrov committed suicide soon after."

Even if anybody would physically be present in the room with Gendo, they still would have failed to notice that under the orange shades, his eyes opened a little bit wider in genuine surprise. And underneath that surprise, the next emotion would have been even harder to read. Fear.

"Impossible.. I-" - Ikari muttered, but stopped himself before going any further. He was sure the email he had received this afternoon was no illusion. Gendo mentally kicked himself for not opening it when he had the chance - after seeing the positive reply to his request of the transfer in the subject field, he had not bothered to open it and actually read any further.

'If he has been dead for days, then that email..'

"_What_ is impossible, Ikari?" - genuine interest, bordering on suspicion flew into the room out of the dark gray speakers. - "Believe you me, we can shut down _any_ part of our subsidiary organisations just like that. I hope you remember that at all times."

"I had.. missed a phone call today." - Not the best lie, but thinking quickly was what counted in this particular situation. - "From the number, I was sure it had been Petrov's office, but apparently not."

"Hm." - Ikari could not tell whether the chairman's hum was one of agreement or one of distrust. - "In that case, give my regards to Fuyutsuki, Commander. This conference is over." - With those words, the pillars powered down almost simultaneously, enabling the bright main lights of the room to come back on by virtue of simple automated programming. It was time to go, but the commander was hesitant to slide his metal-legged chair across the dark red carpeting of the room and get up, remaining seated for several minutes instead, elbows docked onto the surface of a long wooden table.

The dismantlement of one of the NERV bases was certainly big news. But even more than the fact itself, what puzzled Gendo more was how he did not even catch a rumour of such an event before now. Usually, Kozo would tell him if the employees had any interesting to say about the current events, and that was how the Misato Katsuragi jokes made their way to the top brass as well. Surely, news like that would be talk of the day in any circle of people whose careers were even remotely related to NERV. The absence of any such rumours pointed at one thing - the whole procedure was done in secret. And if it was done in secret, there were things that NERV Global Command did not want getting out of Bethany.

Suddenly, Gendo shot up, neglecting to manipulate the chair in a civilized fashion, and rushed off back towards his office. He had to read that email right now.

* * *

"No, Mom, I don't want anything else to eat, sheesh!" - A blonde-haired freckled boy shouted into the hallway out of his well-lit room in an apartment inside one of the high-rise buildings in the centre of Tokyo-3. Tiredly, he slid off his round, thick-framed glasses and threw himself on his bed, where, minutes ago, Kensuke Aida was finishing up his homework for the mathematics class the next day. He was generally well-versed in most of the subjects in the school curriculum, so the homework was not so much challenging as it was lengthy, with each question taking a long time to set out properly on paper. Arms spread on the light blue blanket, he stared at the white ceiling, where he could only barely make out the tiny cracks in the corners, thanks to his bad eyesight. Shifting his gaze from above onto the clock by his bedside, he noticed that it was hardly past nine in the evening, but he already felt like death, and wanted to do nothing except sleep at the moment. Thinking that he might do just that, Kensuke sat upright and started to walk towards the bathroom for the pre-bedtime rituals. The boy stopped short of his destination, instead remembering that some minutes ago he had heard a distinct ring come out of the speakers of his computer on the desk alongside his bed, alerting the teen to the fact that somebody had sent him an instant message in Spyke, a program that allowed people to talk and send messages across the internet, which had become very popular in recent times, with the ever-improving quality of internet around the world.

Taking his time, Kensuke lowered himself into the comfortable chair standing next to it and switched on the screen. A little number 1 glowed atop the blue letter "s" on his computer's task bar, indicating that his suspicions were correct. Rather unsurprisingly, the message was from one of the two people he communicated the most in the world - Touji Suzuhara. When he actually opened the message, the contents made him forget about what he was going to do, making the blonde boy just sit and stare at his screen, reminiscing about the events of the day.

"You think it's true?"

Earlier that day, the trio of friends travelled up to the school roof to make short work of their lunches, as they had usually done since they had become friends years ago, but today something different transpired. Touji and Kensuke happened to intercept a rather curious message coming in to Shinji's cell phone, one from none other than their hot ex-teacher Misato Katsuragi, who doubled up as Shinji and Asuka's guardian.

Well, a guardian sending a text message to their ward would be nothing out of the ordinary, if not for the content of that particular message. Shinji, who had looked like he could not decide what to tell his friends at first, did not even try to lie, and just came clean with the whole thing. But that whole thing that he had disclosed to them was so far-fetched, it ended up sounding as an actual sci-fi cover-up for something else. When Shinji made sure nobody else, aside from his friends, was present on the deserted school rooftop, the pilot proceeded to confide in his friends about the nature of his secret work, nothing too revealing though - he had his reasonable doubts that they would believe stuff like angels and AVE. Shinji was, after all, regarded in school as a bit on the shy side, but he had no wish to be known as a madman. So all that Kensuke and Touji knew at the moment was that Shinji was part of a military training program that prepared children like him to be ready to face off against supernatural threats in battle.

Kensuke imagined Shinji in a military uniform, armed with all sorts of rifles and futuristic-looking devices for fighting demons, UFO's, and the like, which made the freckled boy a tiny bit jealous -being part of an organisation like that was his life-long dream, and not his friend's.

'Supernatural threats? Sure, but _our_ Shinji? Sounds just a tad far-fetched.'

His train of thought was interrupted by the squeaky motion of the room's door creaking open, letting in a face adorned by a warm smile, framed by long, straight, bleach-blonde hair.

"Just don't stay up all night playing games on a school night, Ken" - The face leaned inside the room and glanced at the screen standing right next to the door with interest. Seeing that Kensuke was not chasing pixels around with his mouse, she felt a tiny bit relieved. Nowadays it seemed like all kids cared about were virtual ratings in their online RPG's, MMO's, and other three-letter-whatevers.

"Omg Mom, you know I do not actually stay up _all_ night." - The boy was a bit irritated with his mother's constant exaggerations about his gaming habits. But hey, at least she was tech-savvy enough to not be a total bother about what he did in his free time. At least she knew what "omg" meant, how many other children could say the same about their parents? Not many, the blonde gamer bet. Maybe it was because she was still so young - for a parent, at least. Younger people were always more receptive to changes in the world around them.

"I know, I know." - she ruffled his hair with a smile and proceeded out of the room. - "Good night, Ken"

"Good night, Mom" - he mumbled back, already too tired to enunciate his words, and turned his attention back to the screen. Kensuke decided that he can talk this over with Touji the next morning, or whenever, since Touji was no early bird.

'Anyway, gtg sleep, talk to you tomorrow Touji.'

'Sleep at 9 pm? Lololol ure such a girl dude'

'.i.'

'haha good night.'

* * *

The dim yellow light fell gently on the white sheets and the sizable black suitcase that Mana was cramming the last of her clothes, toiletries, and her other belongings inside of. Having been trained in the military for most of her life, she was used to a Spartan lifestyle, and at first glance, she thought the bag her guardian bought her was much too much. But, as she found out several weeks prior while packing up her stuff from her apartment at one of the JSSDF-owned southern islands, she was just like any other girl her age belongings-wise. On the contrary, the poor black casing looked like it was about to burst wide open, spilling its guts of clothing and underwear all over the floor. Good thing Kaji bought a sturdy European brand of good quality.

Kaji, her guardian, was absent-mindedly twisting a tall, green can of Amstel beer in his fingers in front of the television. The score in the upper left corner indicated that Tottenham had both equalised and pulled ahead in the space of barely two minutes, but the man lazing on the worn-out leather couch paid little attention. Kaji's mind was elsewhere. On his new assignment from Ikari, to be precise.

_'I am aware that this is not your area of expertise, but I am willing to offer you another large sum. This time in exchange for some research work. You will find the necessary documents attached below._

_Ikari'_

The handsome spy took another gulp from the can and set it down on the low wooden coffee table in front. He was just not in the mood for drinking - there was still more than half of the liquid left inside, and slowly but surely, the beer was approaching room temperature.

Either Ikari had something serious planned or he had finally lost it. Kaji was expecting to be asked to do almost anything - even take out some live targets, just like they were taught at the special army academies, but what he had to do just puzzled him. Paranormal research in both public and top secret archives - that was how he remembered the commander to have put it. Digging up information on the Judeo-Christian heaven, angels, and other supernatural aspects was something he could just ask Rits or somebody else to do, right? Or maybe this was something he could not afford to ask through the official NERV channels?

Kaji exhaled a laugh through his nose and smirked in the dark room. The pay was promising to be handsome anyway, so there was no reason to decline the request. Besides, access to some, at least, of the army archives should be easy - he would take the evening plane back to the testing polygon where he and Mana have lived for several years - where his office still stood. From there he could make a couple of calls to the right people and check a couple of folders on the network. He just had to make sure that his ward settled in to the new accommodation without any problems.

The two-bedroom apartment the pair was in was a rather run-down, old affair, with obvious signs of needing repair coming into vision from any and all angles. The promised arrangements cleared through, however, and, by tomorrow afternoon, Private Kirishima would have a nice, new flat all to herself. As her guardian, he was, of course, worried just a bit for her safety as she would be going off on her own, but she was a smart girl, and could, technically, carry a weapon on her person almost everywhere she went. The day when she would leave the adopted family nest had to come sooner or later.

"Kaji?" - The silence in the room behind the spy meant that Mana must have been more or less finished with her packing before the last night the two ever spent at this temporary home.

"M-m?" - He took another sip of his drink before setting it down again and deciding to throw the rest of the now-warm beverage out. His suspicions about Mana were confirmed, as the brunette now plopped down on the cushion next to the one he occupied. Not looking at him, instead she opted to concentrate her gaze on the far wall.

"What's wrong with Asuka?" - The girl managed to say after a long pause, eliciting a snort of what she hoped was concern, and not mean-spirited laughter. Kaji-san could be mean at times, often without, well, meaning it.

"Asuka? What _isn't_ wrong with that girl, right?" - The bearded spy elbowed the girl sitting next to her, in an effort to get Mana to laugh at the expense of the at-times-really-weird redhead, but meeting only his ward's brown eyes, locked in a steely gaze full of reproach. Deciding that seriousness was what Mana wanted, he wiped his forehead in a gesture of exhaustion, and sighed. - "Nothing is wrong with her, she just... had a rough childhood, you see? Her mother died and her father was not really around much, so... She grew up on her own terms, one might say." - Kaji suddenly stopped and turned back to the girl, who had now returned her gaze back to the grey-painted cement, her expression now pensive. - "Wait, why the interest all of a sudden? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time you've asked me anything about your ex-adopted-older-sister." - The out-of-the-blue interrogation about pilot Soryu brought Kaji's own memories of his former ward flooding back. The German girl was far from boring to be around, he would give her that. Even her constant obsessing over him was kind of cute at first, but when a girl continues to do something like that well into puberty... - Kaji did not want to continue that thought. She was like a daughter - well, more like a niece, actually - so thinking bad about her was not something he enjoyed doing. But that girl sure as hell had her strange moments as well.

"You know... just wondering." - The short haired girl shrugged, lowering her gaze a little, a sure sign she was lying, as Kaji had noticed from living with her for so long.

"She is not up to something weird at school, is she? Nothing like forcing Shinji to marry her on the school roof in some kind of extravagant ceremony, right?" - Kaji grinned and elbowed Mana again. - "I still am, technically, in a sense, her guardian. So tell the headmaster I would need to be alerted by the scho-oof" - He was cut short by a dark-purple pillow slamming against his unshaven face.

"I'm sure she is no pervert like what you make her out to be, Kaji." - The brunette got up and started walking towards the open door into her well-lit room that contrasted so much with the living room, only being lit up by the solitary light of the television.

"Yes, you're right. Shinji is probably still an eligible, single bachelor. Your chances are at an all-time high!" - This time, the spy dodged the pillow-bullet and got up as well, and threw the almost-empty can of beer into the garbage with a well-practiced overhand shot.

"But you, on the other hand, _are_ a huge pervert, Ryoji Kaji." - with as stern a voice as she could muster, Mana retreated into her room. The friendly tone of her next words betrayed her and any kind of criticism she wanted to throw at her guardian. - "Good night!"

"Just remember, 6 AM tomorrow!" - he shot back, and threw himself onto the couch in an extravagant fashion, his mood a tad improved.

'Kids' - he thought, grinning.

* * *

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, owwww." - For the dozens of times she had travelled through between the worlds, the jump straight from _Mater_ into the lilim world never ceased to take the toll on her. Not only did her abdomen ache worse than when she had _those_ days of the month, Ishrafiil also looked to have landed several miles off from where the spell _should_ have landed her. The tall pines of the dark evening forest and messy grass sure did not look like the courtyard of the BP petrol station several miles south of Tokyo-3, from where she could easily get a lift from some hormone-riddled teenager for free.

"I'm surrounded by idiots." - The purple-headed beauty grumbled, making her way towards the distant lights blinking in between the branches of the trees, taking extra care to stomp on every leaf and patch of grass that she walked on, as if taking revenge on the flora for her predicament. Thankfully, she decided for the spell to conjure herself into flat-heeled casual shoes this time, a short denim skirt, and a purple tank top. Nothing that would get stuck in the wet ground, or get caught on the sharp twigs.

"Is a spell done correctly, without a 30 kilometre radius of error, too much to ask for?!" - Ishrafiil shouted up at the birds, who decided to take flight to get away from this loud visitor of their forest. The lights turned out to be lamp posts of a busy highway running north of T-3. - "And to think I almost trusted them enough to land me on top of the Trade Centre Tower - hah! The Order of Science, they call themselves. The Order of Morons! Funded , Patronized and Protected by the Flat Crown Princess Ishrafiil, scraped off of the corner of First and Park!" - Seeing no cars on the usually busy road at all, the noble of the house of Rubra let out a primal groan, and started stomping south towards the city, along the side of the asphalt.

Now that she had let her frustration at the situation she found herself in out into the cold night air, the Angel felt a little bit better, and now it was time to soundly assess the situation. Sooner or later a car, going the right way, would definitely pass her, and hopefully the driver would not hesitate to pick up a lonely, pretty, purple-haired woman in need of protection. If the driver was unreasonable - she quickly reached for the pocket of her skirt, feeling a thick, square bump - the money was there. All 10 Yen of it. A feeling of relief was once again washed over by a feeling of fiery rage as she stared into the open wallet.

"Breathe, Crown Princess, breathe!" - she commanded herself, feeling tired of spending all her energy on pointless anger. - "You will have their heads cut off with _particularly_ rusty bread knives, and then fill the positions with _real_ scientists, hand-picked by your own great self, instead of those politics-valuing ministers." - Calmed by that thought, she platted her purple hair, which was slightly shorter than in the real world, behind her pointy ear, and decided to check out the other contents of the expensive-looking leather wallet.

The laminated driver's license said that its owner's name was Kiyomi Ishikana, and that her age was 19. Quickly converting lilim years to Angel years, "Kiyomi" was pleased that they could at least get this part right.

"And the picture ain't bad either." - Nodding in approval at her own smiling image, Ishrafiil slid it back into one of the wallet's pockets, when her slender fingers came upon another thin rectangle inside one of the pockets, this time, it was one its owner was not mada aware of beforehand. After managing to get a solid grip on the object and pulling it out, the Angel stared at the colourful print for a couple of seconds.

There were two people on the tiny photo - one was a very young girl, laughing away without a care in the world, her bright purple hair streaming in the wind, and her pearly smile her most defining feature. She was sitting on the shoulder of a man with messy blonde hair, held down by a large golden crown, an unruly beard, and a proud, kind grin on his face. This was no photo. Well, not lilim photography per se. This was a fragment of a painting from the royal hall. Ishrafiil thought back to when she last had seen it. It had probably been ages ago that it was made - that day, she had gotten in trouble at the school and just decided to simply sneak out and run home. Her father was busy with

-HOOONK-

The sound of the hooter of the eighteen-wheeler truck behind her caught Ishrafiil unawares. Quickly catching the photograph, which she released from the fright, in mid-flight, she stuffed it back into her wallet and waved down the truck to stop.

Muttering to herself something about "loud bastards" and "idiot drivers", she scaled the side stairs without problem. The driver was a middle-aged balding man, looking so indifferent to everything around him, that it seemed she could kick him out of the vehicle, hijack it, scream obscenities as she drove away, and none of that would even make him move a muscle on his face.

"It's pretty late to be walking in the woods.." - The driver eyed her suspiciously, and the Angel, in turn, eyed the driver. She was sure sweaters like those went out of fashion at least 15 lilim years ago. - "Need a lift to Tokyo?"

"Tokyo-3?" - "Kiyomi" asked, already helping herself to the seat.

"Nope, Tokyo-1. Delivering this food right to the corpses, skeletons and ruined buildings." - The red-jersey-clad driver sniggered, pleased with his own attempt at sarcasm.

"Yeah, not funny." - As soon as her messy purple hair touched the slightly-reclined seat, Ishrafiil could feel her mind slip into a fatigue-induced slumber.

'I just hope he isn't some kind of psycho-whatever, or a rapist. It's not like I could resist much even if he was, so, actually, I... don't... care...' - With those thoughts, her consciousness finally gave way to sleep.


End file.
